The Devil's Reprisal
by Diablo Snowblind
Summary: What is the value of a life? Of a soul? The Devil of Tekkadan, Mikazuki Augus, refused to die in the final battle and has been brought back to the beginning of it all, to find the place where he belongs once more. But he has grown up, and the journey will never be the same again.
1. The end of the beginning

**Iron Blooded Orphans: The Devil's Reprisal**

* * *

 _My other half was shattered. Collapsing around me. Too tired to dodge. Three rounds hit, aimed at my chest armor. I could feel the metal break just a little more. The cracks spread. Barbatos was in agony. The cockpit fractured just a little more around me, in creaking spiderwebs._

 _Her voice screamed through the shattered intercom._

" _Why is it? Why do you still resist? It's useless! What cause can you have to fight such a purposeless battle?"_

 _It took me a moment to register. Thinking... came slowly. My vision was dark at the edges, growing darker with each and every heartbeat._

" _Cause? What's that? Purposeless? Maybe." I smirked. They always love to talk... might as well answer... "I never had any purpose. But..."_

 _Three Gjallarhorn Grazes charged in, roaring out of the dust. They raised their weapons, preparing to fire._

" _No! Don't go near him!"_

 _I ran around the girl. My last burst of speed. I could feel my body breaking. But not yet. I'm still alive. And they are so slow..._

 _I threw one Graze into the other, and I grinned, tasting the blood on my teeth. More lambs to the slaughter._

 _My tail reached out, the blade angled just so, coming from underneath... and impaled them both through the cockpits. The Grazes fell to the ground, limp, motionless, skewered. I could feel the red dripping from the blade._

 _I love my tail._

 _I charged the last Graze, ducking under the wild swing of an axe, angling my claw up from below, going around and under the thick forward block of nano-laminated armor. The cockpit block in the Graze models was always weak from below, where no one could normally angle the hit._

 _My claw tore into the cavity. I ripped out the Graze's cockpit and crushed it. It was crunchy. Like ripping out the seed of one of my fruit candies. Blood and oil dripped to the ground. I could feel the hot fluid flowing..._

" _You devil..." The girl whispered over the intercom, her voice sick with horror. Her voice washed over me, ignored. Unregistered. The darkness of my vision closed in._

" _But now... I have purpose that Orga gave to me. I used to have nothing at all... but so many things are... overflowing from my hands now."_

 _I breathed, in tired realization._

" _That's it."_

 _The kind of understanding that comes at the end of a long road._

 _I turned to my final enemy._

" _We'd already made it."_

 _We hadn't needed to fight at all. My memories flashed to Atra, to Kudelia, to the rest of Tekkadan. And then I realized._

' _Yeah, that's right...'_

 _My body's fuel tanks began to explode. The pain was strangely distant. My thoughts were so slow now..._

" _What is with you? With no cause to commit to, why?"_

 _I charged her wordlessly. But I was so tired... my tail couldn't reach her. I couldn't move my body to dodge her bullets. My armor shattered and cracked open. I could feel the wind._

 _It was warm._

 _A voice came over the intercoms. "He's already unconscious..."_

' _The place we truly belong...'_

 _It was with each-other. It had been, all along._

 _My body gave out. I fell against her, feeling nothing. The world went dark._

 _She stood still like a statue for a time, soundless, motionless._

' _Right, Orga?'_

' _Yeah, that's right... Mika.'_

 _She stabbed me, and twisted._

 _My head erupted in agony, but it felt strangely distant. The connection severed. I was just me now. Just Mikazuki, the crippled boy. I couldn't hear my other half any more. I couldn't hear Barbatos. My heartbeat began to fade as the Gundam went dark around me. Blood poured from my eyes, a river, staining Atra's wristband red._

' _Ah... I've gotten it dirty again... Atra's going to be mad at me. I wonder... if Kudelia... will help me apologize..._

 _...to her...'_

 _I fell._

 _A voice roared through the air, not coming through the dark intercom, but through the air itself, buoyed by the cacophony of wild cheering._

 _The girl._

" _Here, under the authority of the Arianrhod Fleet Commander, Rustal Elion, the Devil of Tekkadan has been defeated!"_

 _Darkness._

* * *

The world changed, and time passed.

It could have been minutes. It could have been years. I couldn't tell. My thoughts came so slowly... everything was so achingly _slow_. I couldn't feel anything. I couldn't see anything. It wasn't darkness or light, but something in between.

There was a vague sensation, a weightlessness that couldn't quite be felt, a tone that couldn't be listened to, fading to nothing if focused on. There were indescribable geometries and colors. I could see them only at the edge of my vision. Anything I focused on, disappeared, replaced by an indefinity of shapes and colors in the elsewhere.

I knew this feeling. The old man hadn't been able to explain it, but I somehow _understood_. It had only begun after I fought the mobile armor, after the better half of me went into Barbatos, made stronger, fiercer. No longer limited by flesh and blood and breath.

This void was the dissonance that came when the higher brain and the body were separated, the timeless moment as the split senses struggled to comprehend their own fracture. The bleeding of two halves forced apart, leaving behind pieces of agony. The sensation of complete and utter sensory deprivation made real. The feeling of being separated from Barbatos and adjusting to a smaller, _lesser_ , body.

The void had never lasted for this long before.

The old man had warned about separating from Barbatos while synched. The certainty of brain hemorrhage. Is that what happened?

Time passed.

And then something changed.

My eye felt heavy, felt slow and dark. Like a stone that was nearly, but not quite, too heavy to lift. The other eye was just dark. Barbatos had long ago taken its light. But I looked up.

My other half was standing there, broken and shattered. Scoured by blade and scarred by gunshot. Red oil dripped from the cracks, mingling with my own blood. I could see my body in the cockpit, broken. Barbatos was dying by degrees. Dead already, to anyone but me.

My other half was headless. But still looking at me, with a sight beyond sight.

My other half shuddered. I ached. The darkness at the edge of my vision closed in. Everything felt so heavy.

 _Barbatos is crying..._ I realized. Then my other half spoke. The words weren't spoken. They weren't even words. They were impressions, whispers, whispers that thrummed in the air, that echoed through me.

 _...Not yet. Not yet..._

 _..._

 _...we had only just begun to live..._

 _..._

My other half's eyes flashed red.

The world vanished.

I knew pain. I had lived pain, breathed pain, dealt pain, walked through oceans of it without flinching, without ever stopping.

All to find the place where I belonged. Only to realize, too late, that I'd already found it.

But this pain... it wasn't like dying. Dying had happened by degrees, like frostbite. Becoming colder, becoming more tired, in a thousand blurred steps.

This was different. This was everywhere. My bones burned. My eyes burst. My skull fractured. My organs failed. My teeth cracked. My skin sloughed off. My tongue split. I could taste nothing but cinder, smell nothing but sulfur. The heavy copper of burning blood filled the air.

I imagined that it was like being born. Being born in fire.

I screamed.

My right eye opened.

And then I woke up.


	2. The mission reborn

I don't own Iron Blooded Orphans.

* * *

I woke up in a jumble of tangled limbs. I sat straight up, gasping. My head hit something hard just above me. I winced as groans and curses echoed in the air around me. I had a moment to get my bearings – _soft surface, pitch black, blanket –_ before the pain returned. My limbs convulsed and I fell onto hard, cold metal, screaming through gritted teeth. Tired noises, bleary shouts filled the room as my world went red. Spasms wracked my entire body. My stomach wretched and I violently emptied it into a steaming mess on the floor, violently vomiting again and again until I felt _empty_. Cold and shivering. The lingering ghost of pain. My back was stinging. Then I realized. Someone had been slapping my back. The lights were on, and familiar, _dead_ faces surrounded me.

I looked up into a pair of soft brown eyes, laced with worry and concern. The hyper-alert eyes that could only be found in someone who had been sleeping, but was now wide awake and ready for anything. The eyes of a dead boy. The eyes of a boy I'd let die.

"Shino?"

* * *

"I brought him right to you, boss. Never seen anything like it. He woke up and just started _screaming._ It was like he was being tortured. Then he threw up, like, half his body weight." The boy shifted, uneasily. "No one wanted to get close to him until I went in." He paused for a heartbeat. "We were scared."

 _What is going on?_

"Why didn't you bring him to the CGS doctor?" The dead man's voice held an anger that could cut steel.

"I was gonna, boss, but he looks fine now, right? Figured I should take him to you first. We'd get...well, a _lot_ of shit if we woke the First Division's doctor this late if someone wasn't actually dying."

I looked down, at my _two_ working legs. Why were they working if I wasn't connected to Barbatos?

"Right." The dead man sighed. "Thanks, Shino. I'll handle it. Get back to sleep." He turned to me. We were now alone in the break room.

 _Is this a dream?_

"Mika, how you holding up? You hungry?"

"...Orga?"

"Yeah, what's up?" His eyes were laced with concern, and strangely, fear. I hadn't ever seen him like this before.

"How do you know if you're alive?"

He blinked.

"Bad dreams, huh? Well..." he trailed off, and then grinned. "If your heart beats, if you can feel pain, that's when you know you're still alive. The pain is your body telling you to survive. To live until you die."

"Huh." I paused, looked around. I picked up a fork and stabbed my arm, hard.

"Oi, what are you doing?!" He grabbed my hand and wrenched it away. "Mika!" The fork clattered to the floor.

"Feeling pain. It hurts." I spoke absently, not looking at him. My gaze was focused on the red that tepidly welled from the small injuries. It ran down my arm and slowly dripped to the floor. Then I realized something, and waved my hand in front of my eyes, testing my vision with experimental blinks.

 _They're both working._

"Huh." _I'm alive._ I paused, and looked at him, considering. He was staring at me, speechless.

"You also alive?" I asked.

"Mika, you..." then he started laughing. I blinked. "Mika, Mika... just when I think you settle into a routine, you find a way to surprise the hell out of me. You always have." He cocked his head, and grinned. "Yeah." He punched me in the shoulder. "I'm alive, all right. I'll never die."

 _Liar._ Still, I looked at him. He looked years younger than he'd been when I last saw him, two days ago. Two days that felt like a lifetime. _Was it?_

"When is it?" I asked.

"Huh?"

"What's the date?" I clarified in a deadpan.

"Uh, it's September the seventeenth. You sure you didn't hit your head or some-"

"What year?" I interrupted sharply.

"...it's P.D. 323."

 _Ah. Two and a half years..._

"Mika, seriously." He continued. "What's up? You look like shit. You're really worrying me here, bro."

"I think I died." I replied absently, thinking. _He's only seventeen years old now. What the hell is going on? How is this happening? I was dead..._ He drew back in shock. "What in the _hell – "_

"Hey, Orga." I interrupted, and asked, experimentally. "Do you remember dying?"

He stood still for a time, then palmed his face, sighing.

"I'm too tired for this shit." He then brought me into a full hug. After seconds, I awkwardly hugged back. _Warm._ "No, Mika. I haven't died." He spoke quietly into my ear. "And I don't plan on dying. We've both got too damn much living to do. And don't you forget it. We're on this ride together. Always have been. Always will be."

I smiled. A warmth filled my chest. _I'll never let you die again. Ever._ My arms tightened around him, and he laughed. _Like back when we were kids._ He stepped back, grinning, with the same easy confidence that I'd known for the past nine years, ever since that day in the alley. The day I'd been born, by his side.

"Now then..." he spoke, eyes twinkling. "I'm not sure what's up, but look what you've done to yourself, dumbass." He glanced to my arm. "I'll bandage that up. You hungry?"

"Sure." I replied distantly. I felt a strange weight behind my eyes.

He busied himself in the kitchen, after cleaning and wrapping my wound. I winced with the pain of antiseptic.

"Should I go sleep?" I asked.

"No, you aren't going anywhere." He spoke seriously. "I repeat, Mika. You look like shit. I'm gonna make us some breakfast." He paused. " _Early_ breakfast." His expression soured, and he sighed, tepidly holding a small brown canister. "It's all I can make right now. Oatmeal. The First Division keeps all the good stuff in the main cafeteria and they'd get pissed if us Third Division rats took anything."

He made himself busy in the break room's barebones kitchen. The trickle of pouring water and the hum of a rusting microwave filled the air.

We ate in a companionable silence. As we cleaned the dishes, he spoke to me with a smile.

"I order you, as Third Division's commander, to go get a damn shower. You're off patrol duty tomorrow. Sleep in. Get some damn rest. You need it, looks like."

* * *

 _CGS. Chryse Guard Security._

Their logo was everywhere, around seemingly every poorly maintained, rusting corner. I couldn't see Tekkadan's iron flower anywhere.

I wandered the corridors in a haze. A fugue state, wandering aimlessly. I could feel all of my twenty years. _Or is it seventeen now?..._

 _...I need to talk to Barbatos._

I turned. Sleep could wait. I tracked half-remembered pathways through the old base. The paint had changed _(or never was?)_ , and the loss – _the never-existence? –_ of Orga's renovations after we returned from the Arbrau mission to Earth confused me. The base felt so dead now, in a way. Devoid of spirit. It wasn't just the late hour. Orga's renovations had made the base livable. A comfortable place to live, full of warmth and laughter. Tiled flooring, air conditioning, insulted drywall. Even cheap rugs in a few places.

Now, in the base's depths, it was different. _Less._ The legacy of a shittier past. Just bare, gray metal, old rust, and cold, cold air.

I hugged myself, wishing I had my flak jacket. I could feel the chill of the Martian fall season as I journeyed down rarely-used stairs, far away from where the Divisions lived and worked.

Tekkadan's – _no, CGS's, now... –_ base offield operations was an old, reconverted spaceport and mining facility that had been devastated and only partially rebuilt after the Calamity War. Even nearly three years after Tekkadan had taken over, we'd still been finding new parts of the base as we dug deeper into the ruins. One of those hidden finds, the old ore chute, had been the lifeline that I'd been protecting only hours ago. _Or is it years from now?_

Eventually, the corridors began to warm. The top-secret room in the base's depths. I remembered how the First Division used to beat us if they found us here. The one room – the one _hangar –_ in the base that would always be warm.

The reactor room. The grave of Gundam Barbatos.

Small clouds of red dust puffed into the air with each footstep as I entered the reconverted mobile suit hangar. _Feet heavy._ _Tired. Need sleep._

The room was rarely used, infrequently cleaned. I vaguely remembered days long gone. _Days that are here again, now._ How every so often, over the years, the base would be hit by Martian sandstorms, powerful storm fronts that would come down from the uninhabited highlands and hit the entire Chryse region, sometimes. Sometimes the storms would cake the base in so much dust that it would take weeks to clean. In those rare times, even the First Division would have to help with the chores. Those were bad days, filled with pain.

I remembered how Kudelia, on our months-long journey to Earth, had explained Mars' past. The economic lessons that well-born citizens spent years learning, but that I understood on an intuitive level after a life being made to suffer, at the hands of those who profited from suffering. _Money flows to power, and the abuse of power keeps the flow going._

The sandstorms had once been under control, eradicated by pre-war terraforming technologies. Long-dead days in the past, when Mars was blooming into a blue and green garden world, cared for by men of both Earth and Mars who wanted to make the world radiant. But the Calamity War had killed those dreams, ended mankind's grand ambitions to reshape the red planet into a second Earth. Dreams died, ambitions shifted, and the Earth pulled back from the grand project of colonizing the solar system, leaving the efforts to unregulated capitalists who dreamed only of profit. The people of Mars retreated to the depths of impact craters, canyons, and other geographic lows that could be kept habitable at a minimal cost. The highlands – the vast majority of the surface – were left to wither into dust. Entire cities abandoned to the sandstorms.

After the Calamity War, mankind's collective priorities shifted to the reconstruction of Earth, demanding all of mankind's resources. Priorities on Mars had been suborned to the Earth's reconstruction, then later, to the simple extraction of profit for Gjallarhorn nobility and the great land-owning families like Kudelia's, and the great terraforming work was left incomplete. The people of Mars were voiceless and forgotten. The red planet was reduced from a hope, a new home for mankind, into a mere colony, half-forgotten and left to red dust. Even the most essential step to making Mars a decent place to live, a space elevator, an essential lifeline to prosperity, had never been installed. Mars had been left to rot for generations, centuries past the economic need to rebuild Earth.

A common story throughout the outer solar system.

It was in that condition of neglect and abuse that the solar system's bleeding little corners had been left to fester, and evil men grew fat on the blood of the innocent. My thoughts flashed to all that I'd seen. _Human Debris. Teiwaz. CGS. The Brewers. The Dort colonies. The Outer Sphere's endless poverty, all to feed Earth. Gjallarhorn._

I thought of meeting Atra, starving to death on the streets. _The mother of my child, one of the two girls I loved._ I thought of my other partner, Kudelia, well intentioned, but naive, _so naive_ at the beginning of it all, living in a cloistered bubble of luxury; a bubble paid for by the blood and tears of the oppressed. A rebel against a great machine of evil that grinded down the small and the weak. A machine whose oil was the blood of the innocent, fed by the death of dreams. A machine in which CGS was just one small gear.

 _I can be the lever that destroys it._

I thought of Orga being punched, slapped, abused more by those _fucking coward rats._ Haeda Gunnel, the First Division's commander. The only one who had dared to touch Orga, but who never hesitated to do so at the smallest insult, real or imagined. Unable to tolerate even the slightest question of his small and pathetic authority, a cowardly little man who confused strength and cruelty for effectiveness and imagination. Weasel-face. The worst of them, in many ways. The one who enjoyed dishing out small agonies, always targeting the smallest and weakest of us. Marabura Arkay. The coward backstabber who grew fat on the blood of hundreds of dead children. A buyer of Human Debris, a slave trader. A man who had tried to kill us all.

Men who would all have to die.

My thoughts flashed to Orga. _Never again. I'll never let them hurt you again._

I looked up at my other half, curious. No, more than curious. Desperate to know. _Are we still connected?_ I didn't know. I knew nothing. What did any of this mean? Why was I alive? Why was I in the past? Why did I have my body back, uncrippled? Even my memory felt stronger. Like it used to be. Before Earth.

My eyes pored over Barbatos, taking in the details, remembering all that the old man had taught me, and I snarled internally. _Fucking cheapskates._..

I'd forgotten how Barbatos had been converted into a power reactor, back in the beginning. I remembered that the two Ahab reactors had been getting used for decades at minimal settings to power the base, lowering CGS's expenses. The Gundam had been pillaged for spare parts. It didn't even have a cockpit. Barbatos had been reduced to a skeleton, nearly forgotten. It had taken twenty people and the old man a night and a day under siege to make it half-serviceable again.

I shook my head. _Answers can wait. The future... can wait._

I leaned against Barbatos, a position of sleep I'd settled into long ago, in the days before Orga and I had joined CGS. Before I'd been born. The way I'd slept in the days before I had a home, when I was a half-feral creature eking out a living in the alleys of Chryse's slums, alone, fighting against the other orphans and space rats. This was how I'd slept when I was still living on the streets, with one knee resting on the floor and the other propped vertically. I'd have tucked my hands into my flak jacket if I had it.

The position wasn't entirely uncomfortable, and allowed me maximum mobility on a moment's notice. A state of readiness that had saved me more than once in the past, in the days when I'd been alone. The way I'd slept before I met Orga.

If an intruder came into the room, I could roll away from an incoming attack, I could stand and fight, or run for my life, in under a second. On the streets, the cold stone and mud kept me from getting too restful, would let me wake at a moment's notice. Here, leaning against my other half, it was warm. Like being in the arms an old friend, or a lover.

I thought of Orga. My best friend. My leader. My hero. I thought of the past three years. How we'd come so close, come so far. The friends made, the battles won, and the friends lost.

I thought of why we failed, and how to do it all again, better.

 _I'll make you the King of Mars._

It was more than a promise. More than a wish. It was a resolution, clear and pure and adamantine.

 _I will see it done._

Eventually, my thoughts slowed, and I fell into the first peaceful sleep of a new life. I slept deeply, and dreamlessly.

And like this, the morning found me.


	3. Setting the stage

I don't own Iron Blooded Orphans.

* * *

" _Mika..."_

 _I settled into her, within the confines of the sealed cockpit of Barbatos. Atra made soft sounds, little mewls of pain as I took her virginity, as the hot edges of pleasure ran up and down my spine._

 _We should have started doing this long before._

 _She scratched my back, trying to force herself into me, kissing the hollows of my neck. Her soft skin melded into mine. It felt like home._

 _I grabbed her behind the small of the back and pulled, forcing myself deeper. A rhythm, pulsing, aching -_

* * *

"Oi, Mikazuki! You alive over there?"

I woke up, groaning. _Fuck._ It was the old man, calling from the other side of the hangar. _Nadi Yukinojo Kassapa,_ I remembered. The man who'd made Barbatos strong. If Orga had been Tekkadan's father, he was our grandfather.

Even so, this timing...

"Yeah." I called out across the hangar, controlling my voice. "What's up, old man?"

He walked over. "You know you shouldn't be hanging out down here. You're lucky the First Division didn't find you. This place is supposed to be secret." He breathed, and tossed me my oversized flak jacket. I saw the CGS logo on the back and frowned. "Orga just wanted me to check on how you were doing down here. It's lunch time upstairs. The kids said you had a bad nightmare, scared some of them. You need anything?"

My stomach growled inaudibly. I looked him in the eye. "Yeah." _I want answers._ "I want to connect to Barbatos. Can you help?"

"Huh?" The old man frowned. "Barbatos?"

I blinked, and then I remembered. _We didn't know Barbatos' name, not at the beginning._

"This, I mean." I glanced at the Gundam towering over the hangar. The old man frowned, and I continued. "I don't mean using it. I just want to connect to it."

"Why?" he asked, giving me a curious look.

"I guess..." _I'm not used to lying..._ "I'd just like to see how tough a mobile suit's Alaya-Vijnana system is. I might have to use it someday, right?" It felt guilty, lying to him.

This was the man who'd taught me, taught many so many of the others, how to read and write after Kudelia's enthusiastic, clumsy, starting efforts ended with our arrival to earth. The big old man always had work for anyone who wanted it, always had another kind word or another smile hidden just behind his customary frown. He was a good man, and was in many ways Tekkadan's moral center, Barbatos' father. I'd never trusted the Teiwaz or Gjallarhorn mechanics a fraction as much as I had this old man.

 _I hope that he and Ms. Merribit survived..._

I was filled with a sensation of indescribable loss, suddenly.

 _I'm remembering things that are in my past, now. A future I'll never let happen..._

His frown deepened. He didn't notice that my had attention had wavered. "I guess I could set up an interface, wouldn't take long. And you're right, we should probably start breaking you in. Who knows..." he trailed off, looking over me with a discerning stare, almost as though I were a machine part of dubious quality, and weighing my value.

"I suppose it might be a good call, getting you ready for a worst-case scenario. We might actually have to actually bring this old thing out, one of these days. And you are the best mobile worker pilot in CGS." He looked up at the Gundam, through the dusty air, and sighed.

"But the base relies on the suit's Ahab reactors for power. I can't let you have anything more than operating system control." His gaze lingered over the suit's limbs and armor, stripped of cabling and parts, and his frown soured. "The suit's got a lot of parts missing. I doubt it can even walk right now." He paused. " _And_ I have to clear it with Marabura."

I knew better than to speak, no matter how tempted.

After a few seconds, he smiled. "I'll call the president after lunch. Happy?"

"Yeah." I smiled. "That's fine. I just want to get started." As he nodded I thought of Marabura, sitting in his office of luxury in downtown Chryse, controlling and having the final say over Barbatos. Over us all. Cheerfully willing to leave us all to die if he could profit from it. I thought deeply, and silently. _No, it isn't fine._

I remembered when we'd pillaged his office. The antique collector's weapons from Earth. The fine liquors.

"Let's head up." I spoke after a short pause. I hoped that he couldn't hear the _hate._

"All right." He smiled, and laid a heavy, callused hand on my head, ruffling my hair. "I haven't looked much into mobile suits, not ever since I was a kid in school." He looked up, and sighed. "I wanted to pilot one of these, some day. The legendary Gundam frames..."

The corridors were different in the light of day. Darker, in a way. _Or maybe that's just me seeing how shitty CGS really was,_ I thought. In the light I could better see how neglected the base's infrastructure was, held together by little but spittle and duct-tape and uneducated child labor. Every other pipe or cabling grate needed replacement, and was showing all the signs of centuries of rust. Further below, in places, through the stairwells and mesh grating, I could occasionally see the collapsed corridors below. The semi-collapsed depths of the base that even Tekkadan had only made partial headway into excavating. After the discovery of a pre-war spaceport terminal, we'd suspected that somewhere down there were weapons and resources from before the Calamity War, but had never ended up finding them. The excavations had never dug deep enough.

"This place is in rough shape, huh..." the old man looked around, frowning, as we walked. "I keep telling Marabura to hire some more mechanical help." He sighed in resignation.

"Why doesn't he?" I asked.

"Says there's no need to fix up a pre-war ruin. He's happy to keep the base operating on a shoestring maintenance budget." He frowned. "He probably wants to pass the problem to the next CEO. That, or he'll disband the company when he retires in a few years. One of the two. He isn't interested any more in long-term investment." He paused. "I wonder what I'll do then..."

"Orga could always become the next CEO." I spoke in a deadpan. "I'm sure he'd want to keep you on."

"Hah!" He laughed, and slapped my back. "Never thought I'd see you joke, Mikazuki."

We walked in a companionable silence. As we closed in on the cafeteria I could begin to hear the clanging of dishes, and Eugene's laughter.

"By the way, old man..." I trailed off.

"Hm?" He raised an expressive brow.

"Is there an internet-connected terminal I could use for the day?"

"Huh." He paused. "Didn't think you could read."

"I've been picking up a bit." I responded. _I hate lying to him._ "I was curious about some things. And I do have the day off, Third Division commander's orders." I smiled lightly.

"That you do." He frowned. "But, Mikazuki. It's against the rules for Third Division soldiers to use the internet. You've seen their punishments."

"Yeah." I said.

"Why do you want to use it? Be honest, with me. We've always been straight with one another."

I let him know a part of the truth. _He's right._

"I'd like to look into setting up a bank account, start investing some of my CGS salary. I won't be working here forever, after all."

His eyes began to twinkle. His smile was as broad and deep as his heart.

I remembered how Kudelia had done this for me, once. _I was so blind..._

"Yeah, sure." He laughed. Take this." He tossed me a small key. "This opens the office next to mine, next to the mobile worker hangar. Don't leave a mess in there. I'm glad to see that you're starting to think like an adult, Mikazuki."

I smiled. "Right." I grabbed the key from the air and pocketed it. "Thanks, old man." He turned for the cafeteria with a grin. "By the way," he turned, curious. "Is there a drawing tablet in the office?"

"Yeah. Look in the desk shelf."

We entered the cafeteria, and the old man departed for a table reserved for the adult support staff. I could hear Shino and Eugene laughing in the distance, above the clamor and clatter of silverware. The two of them were talking about the bar girls in Chryse. Despite the ache in my chest, my thoughts turned dark.

 _One month and two weeks until Kudelia arrives..._

 _... a lot of our enemies need to die._

"Oi, Mika, get over here!" I was waved down by another dead man, before I could take my customary seat next to Eugene.

"Akihiro." I sat across from him and stirred at my soup tepidly. _Biofuel-grade potatoes and corn. I forgot our food was this cheap._

"Missed you this morning." He smirked. "Can't believe you left me to pull iron on my own. Really though," his eyes were concerned. "You ok? Sounded like something bad happened last night."

I could more sense than see the dozens of voices that quieted at the nearby tables as they leaned in, listening.

 _Why..._ I was confused for a moment, wondering why the others cared. It wasn't so unusual for a Third Division child soldier, or worse, the Human Debris soldier-slaves, to have violent nightmares. The ones who kept having them usually didn't last long.

... _Right._ I realized. _They must be worried that my body is rejecting the Alaya-Vijnana implants. I've been in CGS for five years, in this world. They know I don't have nightmares._

"I remembered something from a long time ago. I'd prefer not to talk about it."

If I'd felt guilty lying to the old man, it was nothing, next to lying to a man I'd died alongside. I could still remember his broken scream exploding from the intercom. " _So it was you!"_

Like that, the tension nearby dissipated and the cheerful chatter resumed. I could sense Orga continuing to stare, behind me, but I didn't care that he hadn't been convinced. _It's all for you._ My thoughts retreated inward as Akihiro cheerfully changed the topic and began to talk muscle, and I remembered how he'd died.

...Iok Kujan. The man who had somehow, through incompetent scheming and backchanneling, done more than nearly any other to destroy us, second only to Rustal Elion. McGillis – _chocolate –_ my thoughts still involuntarily flashed to the nickname – had explained a lot, in those final days under siege.

Images flashed through my mind, the memories of defeat and treachery. _How many times were we betrayed? How many times was he the one in the shadows? The mobile armor._ _Naze Turbine. Lafter. Jasley Donomikols..._

 _Kujan must die._

"...there tonight. A strength trainer in Chryse was explaining strength training with sand buckets, the results look – "

"Akihiro." I interrupted when I came back to the present. _I forgot how much of a muscle-head he was back then – back now? He – we - didn't have anything else to live for._ "I was wondering something."

"Yeah." He responded cheerfully.

"Can you tell me about your family?"

Akihiro hid the flinch well, but the widening of his eyes was clear. His good cheer dissipated like warmth in the rain.

"You've never asked me before about something like that. About my past." His eyes were serious. "Why now, Mikazuki?"

 _Because I need your help._ "Because of what I dreamed. Things I thought I forgot." I brought my voice low, and tried to convey a bitterness I couldn't feel, not in this. "Things I wished I forgot."

He studied me for a time, before responding. I could hear the others nearby listening in. It was little surprise. _It's rare for any of us to talk about our pasts, and Akihiro is one of the quietest of us all, when it comes to that. He's one of the few of Tekkadan who had a real family, once._

"My parents were petty merchants," he said. "Bulk goods. Not a very profitable business, but it was a good life." He sighed, his voice hollow. "A gentle life." He began speaking slowly, as though dredging up memories half-forgotten. "...We owned a cargo vessel that kept to the routes between the Asteroid Belt and Saturn Spheres. We'd buy parts, construction materials, that sort of thing, and sell them to the colony on Titan. We'd load up on hydrocarbons there and sell them at a few different mining colonies in the Belt, for plastics, fertilizers, that kind of thing." He breathed.

"We were ambushed by pirates near Ceres. Gjallarhorn was never very good about patrolling those routes..." his voice was bitter. "We didn't have a chance. My parents could handle petty pirates. They had, a few times before. But these guys... they had mobile suits. We didn't have a chance. We only had turrets and a few mobile workers."

"What happened to your family?" I asked.

"My parents were killed, protecting my brother and I. Right in front of us. As for the crew... most of the them were killed in gun battles on the ship. The kids were all sold as Human Debris, including my brother and I..." He trailed off, his voice elsewhere, as though coming from the bottom of a dark well.

"The things I can remember... I remember that the pirates executed any of the men who survived, but they took their time with the women. Them, they took onto their ship. I can still remember the screams..." his voice trailed off, before his eyes returned to mine.

"We were bought separately, Masahiro and me. I told him I'd find him, no matter what, but I never did, did I?" he smiled slowly, bitterly. "I was bounced around the Outer Spheres a few times, by different slave traders before ending up here. Guess they figured I'd be more useful as a gun rat instead of a mining rat. You'd know the rest. You were here before me, after all."

"Do you remember the pirates? What their company name was?"

"Yeah." He responded. "Red Line Company. Why?"

Before I had a chance to respond, we were harshly interrupted.

"What's going on over here, you damn brats?"

I looked up, and up, into an anger-lined, combat-weathered, _hateful_ face that I recognized to my core.

 _Haeda Gunnel. First Division's commander. You liked to beat Orga. I remember the look in your eyes when I killed you. I wonder what they'll look like this time around._ Akihiro's hands settled on mine, jarring me out of my thoughts. His eyes were staring deep into mine, his head shaking. His eyes were saying _no._ And then I realized. My hands had been _shaking_ with the _need_ to kill this man.

"You see something you don't like, brat?" Haeda's eyes seemed to inspect me, and judge the whole sum of my value in a single sweep. The look of a man used to spending the lives of others for profit. _This man has sent hundreds of children to their deaths._

"No, nothing." I could hear my voice as though from a distance, flat and dead. My vision was dark at the edges, forgetting the corners of the world to focus on the fine details of this one man. My eyes honed on his heartbeat, the pulse of it visible in the coiled veins running along his neck, at the far edges of his prematurely balding forehead, near the temples. I could _see_ them beating. I remembered ending that beat. _I remember how you begged._

"Right," he said. He unshackled the baton he kept at his waist, and in a casual motion, slugged it across my face. I crashed to the floor, knocked right out of my seat. My jawline felt suddenly cold, my teeth rattling, my cheek burning.

"Don't you ever look at me like that again, you damn brat." He spoke in a monotone. "The rest of you shitty rats, settle the fuck down." His tone changed to anger. "You're here to eat, not make _friends_." His voice dripped with contempt.

* * *

I'd been delayed for hours, forced into punishment detail over Orga's objections. My hands were sore after spending hours in the kitchen, cleaning dishes. _Waste of time._ But I knew that I'd screwed up. _I can't afford to mess up, not now. I can't let any of them catch on._

I was more tired, a lot more tired, than I would have liked before pulling an all-nighter. But it needed doing. I had less time than I needed for what I had planned tonight.

I opened the door to the unused office, and frowned, pocketing the key that the old man had given me. _So much dust._ More than there had been in the hangar. _This place hasn't been cleaned for months._ I wiped the worst of it down with towels and washing fluid from the adjacent mobile worker hangar, and settled myself in, locking the door behind me, carefully making sure that no one, especially from the First Division, saw me.

It had been a rare, rare occurrence, but I remembered the few times that it had happened – when a member of the Third Division was caught using the internet. The beatings they'd give to the breakers of _that_ particular rule were fearsome.

 _They don't want the space rats to know how bad their lives really are..._ My thoughts were cold. _Easier to control them if they don't know how much better things could be._

Then again, even CGS was better than unemployment, which was little but a slow death sentence for orphans, bastard, and space rats. The forgotten children, far below the lowest of poverty lines, who could always be found in Mars' dark corners.

None of that encompassed my purpose for being here. I already knew the taste of freedom. No – I needed information. I needed power, allies, money, and the knowledge with which to act. Above all else, I needed to flesh out the skeleton of my plans, and to act discretely, as an unknown factor in the shadows, until Kudelia's arrival in a month and a half.

The base was beginning to quiet down around me, as people settled into their sleep. I booted up the old computer and settled myself into the creaky office chair. I kept my water canteen and my snacks near at hand, fuel that would be needed for the long night ahead.

And I began to read.


	4. A plan, altered

I don't own Iron Blooded Orphans.

* * *

"Mr. Augus, this is not a properly filed request..."

I tuned him out, idly looking around the office. _Be patient,_ I told myself _._ I remembered the suspicious looks I'd attracted a few minutes ago, walking into a building that most Third Division soldiers scarcely even knew existed. _Don't give them a reason to throw you out._

I chewed on one of Atra's snacks, relishing the taste of it while my thoughts wandered. I occasionally had to blink sleep away. _Not used to all-nighters._

The CGS support staff offices were probably the cleanest part of the base. Little expense had been spared in making this part of the base liveable. The office I was sitting in wasn't quite luxurious, but it was a close thing. _Probably built after long the war,_ I idly thought. Regularly vacuumed and comfortably built, this building wasn't kept tidy by Third Division, but by actual professionals who drove in weekly from Chryse. One of the many luxuries that it had taken Tekkadan far too long to realize even _existed._ Then Shino figured out we could order beer over the Internet, from the terminals in this very building. Biscuit had put a stop to that _quick,_ over Eugene's complaining _._

 _I miss them._

The field offices for the upper ranks of CGS were situated far away from the hustle and bustle of the barracks and garages and fuel depots. _Orga practically lived here,_ I remembered. Not long after we'd taken over, Biscuit had had a futon shipped in for Orga personally, for the many restless nights it had taken to get Tekkadan off the ground. I could still remember Eugene laughing his ass off when that thing had come in.

He'd gotten one himself not long after.

But that was all in a past life. _This isn't our home, not yet._ Right now, I wasn't even supposed to be here. I could feel the curious stares on my back me as the other staff walked past the open office door. _Probably the first Third Division soldier they've seen here in months._

Now to convince this stubborn accountant to just _give me what I want_. My attention returned to him.

"...saying you want a vacation, effective _immediately_? For four _weeks_?"

"Hm." I nodded in agreement. _How many times do I have to say it?_ "I've been here for a few years without taking any time off. Figured I might as well. I've re-read my contract, I know that vacation time adds up." _Nearly entirely honest._ I felt proud of that, in a strange way. _I'm getting better at lying._

I'd just never read the CGS employment contract in the first place.

 _Can't stay here. Too much to do. I'll be back when Kudelia hires us._ But of course I couldn't tell him that.

I thought of Orga. _He can take care of himself. For a few weeks._

Dexter Culastor's eyes narrowed in suspicion from across his desk. He brought his hands together on the table, steeping his fingers.

"Yes, vacation time adds up. One week per yearly employment cycle, added _consecutively_ year over year." His voice rasped, as though internally wondering if I even knew the meaning of any word with more than two or three syllables. _He isn't used to dealing with us 'space rats.' We're uneducated, not stupid._

I kept silent, staring at him. It was a useful thing I'd realized in dealing with people, months ago. A silence in conversation is a void waiting to be filled by the weaker person. Like blinking in a staring contest.

A minute passed, and the accountant looked down, sighing. I smirked internally. A victory of a whole different sort.

 _I'm free._

You do realize that this is improper?" He paused, trying to reinforce a point I couldn't care less about. I shrugged.

 _Don't care._

He hesitated, probably seeing something in my expression. "...Regardless of your accumulated vacation time, your monthly pay will be docked if you insist on this without a few weeks scheduled notice."

"It's _fine,"_ I said for the fourth time. "I have things to do."

"Like what?" He asked. "I do have to make a note of the reasons. The First Division's commander will be asking, even if you do have permission from Itsuka."

I sighed. _What's the best way to hide the truth?_ "I want to spend some time with my girlfriend." _Not even a lie._

"Fine." He scowled. "Just know that if you do this again you'll probably be fired from CGS. I'm marking this down in your file." He paused, and smiled awkwardly. "Then again, I can understand wanting to take time off for that reason. Best of luck with it."

His smile reminded me of the better times this man had, and would have, under Tekkadan. Being led by men worth following.

 _Still an enemy. For now._

"So, you'll want to sign this and – "

"One thing first." I interrupted. "I'm going to need my salary account information."

* * *

Curious glances followed me as I walked into the hangar, out of uniform.

The sun shone bright as I entered the mobile worker hangar, duffel bag slung over my shoulder. The hangar was filled with the low clamor of last-minute ammo loading and maintenance. _Today's a mobile worker field training day._ I idly considered one of them. It had been over two years since I'd last used one of these. Did I want to...

 _No._

Besides, I had a ride to catch.

"Hey, old man!" I called across the hangar. The grizzled engineer looked up from a schematics tablet computer and started walking over. The weight of his mechanical prosthetics seemed to make the ground _thud_ with each step. Several familiar faces curiously looked at me, while Akihiro cheerfully waved from atop his own mobile worker. He probably thought we were going to face off again. Having to miss that made me feel oddly guilty. _Even if he'd probably wreck me now. Too out of practice._

"Mikazuki," said the old man as he walked up to me. "What can I do for you?"

"I'm taking some time off." He curiously looked down at my casual wear, and nodded. "Before I left, I wanted to know. When do you think you can have Barbatos ready for a synch test?"

"Yeah, about that." He sighed. "Marabura said no."

The world seemed to turn, and become a little darker. My thoughts returned slowly, and I snarled internally. _That bastard..._

"Why..." my voice trailed off, and then I realized. "He doesn't want anyone from the Third Division using it, isn't that right...?" My voice trailed off, in a cold realization.

 _We didn't ask for permission the first time around._

"Yeah." He reluctantly nodded. "I sent him your biotechnical and pilot information, not that he didn't already know about you. I told that we were only going to do synch testing. But he said no. He doesn't want any kids using it." He sighed.

"Are you sure we need his permission...?" I trailed off.

He frowned deeply. "Sorry, Mikazuki. I like you, but I'm not going to risk my job over a low-priority request. It's not as though CGS is in genuine threat of being attacked on-site anytime soon." He paused, and seemed to hesitate. "You sure you're all right?"

I quickly blanked my expression. The anger - _the rage_ \- had been leaking through. My plan had been delayed, possibly even crucially, by the ignorant meddling of a pathetic bureaucrat, a man worth remembering only for that special set of cruelty and greed found only in the cowardly and the weak.

 _What can I do without Barbatos?_

The answer came to me in a flash, an inspiration with the force of a prophecy.

* * *

While I watched the bus to Chryse slowly approach from the distant horizon, I could hear steps coming from behind. The long and confident stride of my best friend, settling to a stop beside me.

"Oi, Mika."

"Hm." I glanced at him.

He seemed to hesitate. It wasn't a usual expression on his face, and I didn't like it, at all.

"Yeah, Orga?"

"...what's been going on lately, Mika?" His expression was serious. "You haven't acted the same, at all, ever since your nightmare."

It took me a moment.

 _I haven't spoken to him much,_ I realized. _Or the others. No wonder he's worried._

"I realized I have some things to do. That's all." I spoke quietly, gazing into the distance.

He grabbed my shoulder.

"Yeah, see, Mika. That's what I mean. You don't lie. And when you do you're horrible at it." He whispered. "What's really going on?"

"Orga." I spoke seriously, and he stood straight. _Have to convince him._ "CGS is thinking about cutting us loose. All of us. I'm heading off-base to prepare for it."

"Huh? I mean, I wouldn't be surprised, but – "

"There's a job coming up for us. A big one, but it's very high risk." I paused. _Have to tell him something._ "It's an escort mission to Earth."

"Why would they assign _us_ for a long-haul escort?" He responded sharply. "The First Division always handles that sort of a job. We haven't even _been_ to Earth before." He paused for a moment, thinking. "Still, long-haul escort shouldn't be too bad. What's the angle, Mika?"

"We're going to be asked to escort Kudelia Aina Bernstein."

He blinked. "That celebrity for the independence movement? Why would that be a..." he trailed off, and cursed. "Shit."

"We're expendable." I breathed, confirming his suspicions. "The president's going to lie to you. He'll tell you that this job is his recognition of how strong the Third Division is now. But, she's wanted by Gjallarhorn. She has a system-wide no-fly-order. If Gjallarhorn figures it out, they will come for us."

"So he's isolating First Division from the risk, but he isn't going to actually turn down the job. Shit." He spat. "That greedy bastard..." he trailed off, and paused, thinking.

"How did you figure this all out?"

I smirked. _By dying._ "By reading the First Division's e-mails."

"Since when can you..." he grinned after a pause. "Keep surprising me, Mika. So, what's the plan?"

I opened my mouth to respond, and then my brain caught up to it. My train of thought changed, and images flashed in my mind. Realizations. The world spinned.

 _He's never asked me that before. Ever. I never cared where he'd decide for us to go. I just made sure we'd get there. Always following his orders..._

 _...would we have found a better way, if I'd said more? Done more? More than just fight? Where did all the fighting even get us in the end? Could I have helped him find a better way if I'd just SPOKEN?"_

I snarled internally at the last, remembering how he'd died, murdered by unknown assassins on the streets of Chryse. With me stuck in the hangar, stuck with the choice of being either, functionally, chained to Barbatos, or crippled while away from Barbatos. I hadn't, _couldn't,_ have been there to protect him, because I'd been _weak._

"...ka, Mika, you there?" Orga was waving his hand in front of my nose.

I spoke immediately.

"Take the job. It's a huge opportunity. The girl has powerful backers, and they're willing to pay a _lot_ to get her to Earth. But keep an eye out, and don't let the First Division screw us over. They'll try to sell her or flee the moment they see Gjallarhorn. And we're going to need better weapons. I'm heading out, to take one. We'll need it."

Orga blinked. Something in his eyes flickered.

"I honestly can't remember you saying that much at once, ever." He grinned, and lightly punched me in the shoulder. "But I'm liking the change, Mika. And the plan." He paused. "You sure you're all right, though?"

I couldn't bring myself to lie to him. Not after that question.

"...I don't know. But I think I will be." I sighed, and my composure returned. "Maybe I really do need some time off." _Maybe I really do._ But something in me, some iron core that death had only tempered, not broken - _made stronger -_ told me that I wouldn't have that luxury. _Not yet._

"I'll keep an eye out, Mika. Honestly..." his voice sobered, and his eyes became colder. "This isn't a surprise. The others have started to notice it. Biscuit especially, you know how he can see through people sometimes." He breathed, collecting his thoughts, and I became curious. _He never mentioned this before. He knew something even before the attack?_

"The First Division is getting nervous." He continued. "They _know_ that we can be stronger than them. We have more soldiers, and better pilots, with the advantages of the surgery. We have aces like you and Akihiro. We score better than them, on average, in the sims and the live tests. People in Chryse are starting to notice, and have been asking for _us specifically,_ to do better jobs, jobs that _they_ want in the First Division." He breathed, and continued.

"It's why they've been shortening the leash lately. I was wondering where this would all end up going... I suppose now I know."

That... explained a lot. Realizations flashed in my mind. _No wonder Orga asked me to kill them as soon as he had an excuse, the first time around._

The Chryse bus shuttle was close now, slowing down as it turned into the parking lot just outside the base's gates.

"They're going to turn on us, one way or another." I said after a minute, nodding in slow agreement.

Orga knew it for the considered pause it was, not the hesitation we'd expect from weaker men. For being able to see that - that was why he was my best friend. He _listened_ , not just to what I said, but to what I _didn't_ say. He was special like that. The kind of friend that men dream for in their waking moments, in their daily struggles, on their death beds, but never manage to find. Orga was the kind of person you could spend all day with, doing nothing, not saying a single word, yet he still could find a way to _understand._ Not all conversations needed words. Not with the best of friends.

He grinned in response, and I loved him for it. "I'll make sure that we're ready. So – what's this weapon you mentioned?"

"You'll see soon", I said, and smirked as I stepped on to the bus. "You'll like it. Maybe I'll even let you use it. Maybe." I stopped, considered, then added after a pause. "Then again, Eugene has better scores than you in the simulators lately."

"Hah! This better be a good one, Mika." He chuckled as he walked away. He waved without turning back, his voice teasing. "Say hi to Atra for me."

"I will." I promised.

I took a seat on the lonely bus, paying the surly driver with a swipe of my ration card. My thoughts turned inward, to past battles, to lost opportunities, to missed shots – _Shino, screaming, the girl intercepting the crucial shot, a friend dying –_ and I remembered my plan. I remembered Barbatos, beyond my reach, for now. And I remembered the sleeping weapon that I was now on my way to collect, without anything of the money or resources needed to wake it and make it strong. The first real step on the road to the future.

 _Flauros._


	5. Tekkadan

I don't own Iron blooded Orphans.

* * *

"You've got the room for two weeks," the woman said, not quite looking at me. "Please, enjoy your stay in Chryse."

"Thanks," I said absently, pocketing the key as I left the hotel. The somewhat ratty, run-down building was in the margins of Chryse's core districts. I'd gotten the impression that it was, mostly, a short-term stay house for Earth tourists, at the lowest end of the acceptable for them. Most stayed in the inner city or left, quickly, for the up-scale resorts in Hellas or Marineras.

The suspicious glances I'd gotten from the hotel staff and the few guests made me feel distinctly out of place – like a hood rat in a fine restaurant. I ate my lunch in the corner, quietly, and left quickly. _I need to buy new clothes._ The staff at places like this could _smell_ the poor. But by the city's overall standards it was a good business, mid-range in cost, more than I would have liked to pay – _more than I can afford for long –_ but it would have to do, for now.

Anything cheaper, anything further from the Chryse downtown, would be a den for addicts, prostitutes, drunks, hybrids, and other colony scum. I needed a place to stay where I wouldn't need to worry about my room being stolen from. _This place will have to do._

I'd considered staying with Haba, Atra's employer. The woman was like a distant aunt, with unusual and useful connections throughout the Chryse region. How she'd managed to leverage her old career into selling Earth-imported agricultural seeds, I'd never figured out. If I'd asked her for help, she'd definitely have ideas – good ones. But that would have attracted questions, questions that I couldn't easily answer. I had to do this on my own.

 _And I'm not going to get anyone else involved,_ I thought, as I hailed down a cab. _Not yet._

* * *

There were no cars in downtown Chryse, not anywhere I could see. The shops were shut down and residents nervously peered out from behind locked doors, down from closed windows. The city was on pause, the peace balancing on a knife's edge. But the streets were still full.

I was near Chryse College's City Campus, judging from the look of the area. _Kudelia went here,_ I remembered. _She dropped out to focus on getting to Earth._

This part of the city was beautiful, built of old brick buildings that were centuries old, and I could smell fire. In the distance I could see cars that had been set aflame, tires burning with a thick and greasy smoke.

Protestors were marching down the middle of the lanes outside the college, an endless sea of angry bodies. I looked at them, closely. _Many of them are students. Rich kids. Why do they care about independence? Aren't their families the ones who gain from all of this?_

I shrugged. _I'll ask Kudelia later._

Several blocks north, the crowd was hunkering down behind a line of improvised shields, sheets of metal and plastic. I could smell tear gas in the air. I could see the streets where the crowd had stopped; just before the city's central square, where the Chryse Autonomous Region's government was headquartered. Nervous-looking Colonial Police Forces had bunkered down in the square, behind lines of sandbags and riot shields. The no-mans-land in between was littered with spent tear gas grenades and abandoned water cannons.

I stopped and watched the chaos for a while, going through my bag of dates one at a time.

" _Independence! Independence from Earth for the Chryse Autonomous Region! No more colonial rule! Mars for the Martians! Resist! Resist! Resist! Down with Representative Norman Bernstein!"_

 _Kudelia's father?_ I couldn't remember. She hadn't talked much about him.

More cries carried out over the air, less distinct. Shouts for lower taxes, justice for covered-up crimes. Demands to protect the innocent at the expense of the powerful.

 _It's no different from the Dort colonies,_ I realized.

Stories like this were... typical, from what I'd seen during Tekkadan's quest through the Outer Spheres. The injustices that drove these people to the streets were common; a typical thread throughout a solar system increasingly plagued by piracy and corruption and slavery, filled with the victims of Gjallarhorn's decaying reach and failure to uphold the rule of basic law.

A voice carried over the crowd, projected by a megaphone, a voice that I would recognize anywhere, everywhere. _Kudelia,_ I realized, in a moment of strange happiness. _She's here._

" _Remember, everyone! No fighting! Peace is our weapon. Peaceful resistance, Mars for the Martians in the name of peace! In the name of our freedom! In the name of justice!"_

Cheers answered her, carrying through the air and echoing throughout the city. I could feel the sound quaking the asphalt under my feet, the sheer force of it thrumming in my blood like a second heartbeat. The water in a puddle near my feet rippled under the sheer _roar_ of the crowd.

" _Kudelia! Kudelia Aina Bernstein! The Maiden of Independence!"_

I couldn't see her, not through this crowd. But I knew she was here. The urge to go see her _ached_ at me. It was only through a violent _wrench_ of my thoughts that I forced myself to _think._

 _This isn't the time. This isn't the place. This isn't your fight._

I walked away.

 _But the time will come. I will see you again,_ I promised myself. _Kudelia._

I kept walking, to Chryse's true downtown. Slowly at first as I made my way through the crowd, then faster as I found myself free in the streets to the north-east, in the direction of the city's corporate heart. The buildings kept growing higher, stretching to the sky far above. I saw what was lying ahead of me, and I grimaced. _They don't like space rats around here. Don't stand out._

I kept to the sidewalks, keeping clear of the forces that were heavily garrisoned in the area. _The protests haven't gotten here yet_ , I realized, eyeing the security barricades staffed by mobile workers and men with powerful rifles. _Gjallarhorn is keeping this area open,_ I realized, with a glance at their weapons, at their insignias of the Seven Stars. Snipers were stationed on the roofs, in the windows. _They're equipped for live-fire battle. The protestors shouldn't come here. Gjallarhorn isn't like the Colonial Police._

The stores were still open here. But there weren't many people shopping. The few I could see looked wary, and nervous.

 _No wonder Gjallarhorn hunted her,_ I realized, looking around. _She's pretty much shut the city down._

My thoughts churned and tossed as I walked, and I remembered the past. Kudelia wasn't the type to accept the limits forced on her by others. _Even by her own father,_ I remembered, and smirked. _She wasn't hunted across half the solar system for being a good little girl._

Those protestors would be here soon, I knew. I wished I could be here to see that particular anthill get kicked. _I just hope it doesn't become a slaughter._

I couldn't remember anything like that happening, _before._ Then again – I never had followed the news much.

A time later, I found my destination.

I walked out wearing the best clothes I'd ever had.

* * *

Grotzinger Center, stretching just off Chryse's Sixth Avenue, was a sprawling complex, a monument to colonial wealth. It was a nexus, a heart for Martian banking and finance, specializing in, among many other things, half-metal and asteroid mining to feed the arms industries on both sides of the law. Named for a geologist who was one of the planet's first explorers – the man who'd discovered the nearly endless gold mines sunk into the flanks of _Olympus Mons_ , embedded in ancient seafloor – this was not a place that a nationless space rat like me had any right being within a kilometer of. This square of glittering skycrapers housed the corporate headquarters of two thirds of the wealthiest business magnates and land-owning Gjallarhorn nobility on the planet. That was all public knowledge.

I walked into the imported white marble and aluminum glass lobby of a certain skyscraper, a tower devoted to the arms industry. Even dressing in the best clothes I could afford - a suit I'd just bought in the downtown, depleting my reserve of galars uncomfortably low – I still attracted strange looks from the building's roaming executives. I felt jittery and cold. My breath was faint.

 _I'm nervous,_ I realized, grimly. I thought of what was waiting up above.

 _I better be._

The security frowned when they looked me over, but they nodded, and let me pass, after a pat-down and a few lies. They probably thought I was a student coming in for a job interview. I had no doubt I'd have been kicked out of here outright if I'd come in here wearing my old cargo pants and flak-jacket. Only the CGS logo would have kept me from being thrown into an overnight jail.

What was less well known to the public was that the building happened to have a floor devoted to adult entertainment – _escorts,_ mistresses on call for the wealthy and the powerful, prostitutes so expensive that they weren't even _called_ prostitutes. I got into an elevator and pressed the button to _that_ floor.

What _wasn't_ public knowledge at all was that, in the depths of that floor, past a facade of debauchery, there were a set of hidden offices that happened to house one of the most powerful crime lords on this side of the Jupiter Sphere, a man who conceivably wielded more power than Gjallarhorn's Martian colonial arm or the planet's three biggest PMCs combined.

I walked out of the elevator and stood before a long, mahogany desk that served as a barrier between the entrance and the rest of the floor. Sitting behind it was a single stunningly beautiful woman, her hair held back in a single severe pony-tail and wearing a silver headset that graced her jawline. She eyed me neutrally – no coldness, no warmth. "May I help you?"

"Mikazuki Augus here to see Leo Gesler," I said, carefully keeping my hands open and in her line of sight. _This woman is no escort,_ I remembered. _She's ex-Gjallarhorn special forces._

The woman's voice and features remained neutral. "Mr... Gesler?"

"Leo Gesler," I nodded. "He's a big guy. Bald, lots of prosthetics. A few ugly scars. He's got a very impressive knife collection. He also controls most of the illegal arms trade on the planet."

"Right," she said, words meant to distract from the silent panic alarm underneath the desk. The doors burst open and two deadly-looking men in combat visors ran out, wrestling me down and holding me prone against the floor.

"Take him to the boss," she said. "Strip him down first. Standard protocol. Remember the handcuffs."

* * *

"You want _what,_ Augus _?"_ The figure, more machine than man, questioned darkly. "I thought I told you to never show your face to me again... five years ago, or so."

I was standing in the back rooms of the most expensive brothel on the planet, in a skyscraper high above Chryse's streets, flanked by _things_ that were considered to be living human-rights violations in every Sphere from Mercury to Oort. Abominations wearing business suits worth at least a hundred thousand galars.

After asking a certain series of questions that couldn't be ignored, I'd been escorted here by a pair of tall, dead-eyed men, whose movements were too smooth and long to be merely human. _Hybrids,_ I thought, glancing at the men. Their skin was much too smooth and hairless to be natural, and their unusually thick limbs hinted at durability and speed beyond the merely human. _Mechanically enhanced bodyguards for a man only a few organs away from being a machine,_ I thought, darkly. _It's fitting._

This floor devoted to women had a reputation among pirate lords, merchants, smuggler chiefs, bankers, CEOs, and other criminals in suits for being discreet and high-class. But only _criminals_ knew of the business's true purpose – a front business for one of Chryse's wealthiest men.

And as I stared into the eyes of the man sitting across from me, I knew that I'd be dead in the next minute if I didn't navigate this conversation _exactly_ right.

"Things have changed, Gesler. I need gear."

"More gear than you can _afford_ , Mikazuki Augus." The man glowered down at me through a prosthetic eye, and curled his lip with a jaw that was more metal than flesh. His suit stretched across his barrel of a chest _unevenly_ , rippling with hidden muscle on the right, and metal on the left. "I know for a fact what you space rats earn at CGS." He glanced to my cheap suit, and his lip curled in disgust. "Why am I even talking to you?"

"Because you were curious," I lightly replied. "And because I did decent work for you, once."

He nodded, slowly, and smirked. "You should have stayed with me, Augus. I'd have done right by you. Done you a square deal. CGS is a joke, and you're wasted on that group of fifth-rate ragtags."

"You might be right." I replied lightly.

Leo 'the Strangler' Gesler was possibly Chryse's most reclusive arms dealer and its most vicious loan shark. He was a myth to all but the most well-connected, a bogeyman of the city that was, to the ordinary person, more legend and rumor than flesh and blood. Among his many other indirect interests, he was the man in the city that the _other_ arms dealers bought and borrowed from. He _never_ did street level business – he was the kind of man who only worked from the shadows and only did business with organizations, _discreetly_.

I'd also worked for him as a child, so many years ago. One of the many child soldiers he'd used as killers and street pushers to climb in the ranks of Chryse's underworld. In a different life – _in more than one way –_ I'd been one of his best killers, until I met Orga and he took me away from that bloodstained life. Gesler had disappeared not long after, after calling a meeting of his rivals and detonating an improvised fuel-air bomb in a concrete mixer in the garage directly beneath the conference room.

There had been no survivors.

Back then, Gesler had been nothing but an ambitious, middling crime lord. I hadn't known how high he'd risen in the world until Tekkadan had begun to buy arms from Noblisse Gordon's companies. Gesler had been the managing intermediary that Orga had worked with more directly – it had been an uncomfortable surprise for both of us to see this man again. It made me think. _Some men make a career out of cruelty, for crossing the lines that their betters know not to._

It was a lesson worth remembering.

His business, before and after his disappearance from the public eye, had always confused me; no one in Chryse had known what his sources were, in money or weapons or legal protection. Now, knowing what I did, I suspected the truth – the one explanation I could think of for Gesler's resources and his decades-long evasion of Gjallarhorn's occasional crackdowns. This man was Noblisse Gordon's proxy on Mars. His lieutenant and the representative of his business in the city and Mars generally. A man who'd likely been bribing Gjallarhorn's Martian branch for the past decade.

 _Saying any of that will probably get me killed_ , I knew.

After considering me for a minute, he spoke. There was no emotion in his biological eye. The mechanical one narrowed on me. "Oh?" He said, slowly, neutrally. "You looking to jump ship, _again_?"

"Maybe," I said. _No,_ I man didn't give second chances. If I said yes, I'd have a bullet to the back of my brain within seconds. If I said no, it would likely be the same result, after a round of torture. "I need certain gear and a good money launderer for a job I'm doing tonight. I figured that you'd be interested, and I'd be willing to cut you in."

"Interesting," he smiled, slowly. "What's the job?"

"I've got the information to get into CGS's corporate accounts."

* * *

Two minutes of explanations later, Gesler was laughing so hard that the table was _shaking_ , and he was rubbing his own gut. He slowly settled down and invited me to sit across from him. The pair of hybrids removed my handcuffs. A gesture later a slender young woman came over, and Gesler turned to her, smiling.

"Bring the full house package, Euphoria. And bring a _'47_ for our guest here."

She nodded silently and left the room.

"You always did surprise me, Augus." Gesler said. "Whatever happened to the good old loyalty that that street rat friend of yours – Itsuma, was it? - always talked about?"

"Itsuka," I lightly corrected. It took effort to keep my face blank at the insult to Orga. _Can't make a single mistake here._ "You know how it is, Gesler. Why be loyal to people who have no loyalty to you in turn?"

"That's what _I_ told you, idiot kid." He said, fondly. "Glad to see you learned something from me, at least."

"I learned something too, Gesler. All on my own." I said lightly, slowly. "A lesson, from me, to you. It's the... reason why I thought to come to you, after all this time.

He arched his eyebrow. "Oh? Do go on, Augus." His eyes flickered.

The hybrid bodyguards seemed to shift in the shadows, reminding me of the quick and cruel death I'd find for a single misstep here.

I glanced at his mechanical arm, largely hidden underneath an oversized sleeve. What I could see was dark and heavy, and promised all manner of hidden weaponry.

I was unarmed, in a pit of monsters. Here, my voice could be my only weapon.

"It's the one dark secret to human affairs," I said, remembering a dead past. _Every single step forward that Tekkadan ever made happened over the corpses of our enemies. Nothing less ever got us anywhere, never gave us anything but traitors and enemies and dead friends. We failed because we were too weak. Because I was too weak. No more._ I breathed, and spoke.

"It's that talk is cheap and easily ignored. Only by fighting – by killing and preparing to be killed for your beliefs – can you change something." I paused. "Everything, I suppose."

" _Interesting_ ," he said, in a lazy smile. "You should tell that to supporters of that Bernstein girl. They've been doing peace marches in the downtown for _weeks_." His eyes flickered to the window. "They say we'll have independence marches right outside this building, soon. Can you believe it?"

"They're naive," I said, matter-of-fact. "Independence will mean war. Gjallarhorn will never let go so easily."

"Hm." He snorted, amused. "You've grown up to be an interesting kid."

"Not all wisdom is found in books," I said. "Some can only be found from behind the barrel of a gun. That's a part of why I'm here."

He _grinned,_ and leaned forward, settling his chin on his hands, peering at me curiously, like he was seeing me for the first time, and liking what he saw _._ " _Indeed._ Let's talk business, Mikazuki Augus."

I folded my hands on the table, leaning forward to match him.

"I need a million galars up front. I need the services of an _obedient_ and _discreet_ construction or mining company. I need certain weapons. I need the services of a corporate lawyer experienced with military contracting. I need a certain mobile suit refurbished. And I need a corporate bank account that can handle having a few billion galars laundered into it in the next few days."

He blinked, and grinned. It did not reach his eyes. "Well, haven't you grown up into the ambitious little rat." His voice was neutral, unconvinced. He wasn't taking me seriously, not yet. _He doesn't think I can execute. He's going to test me. If I fail, I die._

"Let's start with the money that you plan to... steal, from Chryse Guard Security's accounts." He said, slowly. "Let's talk cuts, first. Everything else you mention is worth less than a slave's fart on the wind until you can follow through on actually having _money."_

"First," I said, "can _you_ handle laundering that much, in that time, without being found out?"

"I've got plenty of ways, Augus." He spoke, matter-of-factly. "People who work for me in all of the tax offices and Fortune 500 companies on the planet. I've got a line on the tax commissioner himself." He smirked, and leaned forward further. I could see the incisors of his teeth. " _I'm not the one_ in this conversation should be worried."

"I just don't know much about money laundering," I admitted. "Or the people you use to do it."

"They're accountants," he shrugged. "If you twist them enough, the numbers will scream how you want them to."

"All right." I did not pause. _Do not hesitate._ "So, what rate should we go at?" I asked, levelly.

" _If_ this actually goes through, I want sixty." He smiled, cruelly. "You are talking to the best money launderer in the Mars Sphere, after all."

"Standard rates are _five,_ Gesler." I warned, drawing on my memory. _If I give in too soon, he'll think I'm desperate, that I'd say anything to live. He'd have me shot instantly._

"You know how it is with opening offers, Augus." The man's teeth reminded me of a shark's. "I smell weakness, or else you wouldn't also be asking for equipment and money _before_ you can execute. And I suspect that you're a one-man crew representing the entirely of Mikazuki Augus, incorporated. You're balls out of luck if I say no, aren't you?"

"...yes." I replied slowly. _Couldn't smuggle anything out of CGS,_ I cursed to myself. _If I did, they would have figured it out._ "Still, sixty percent is ridiculous. I'll do _ten."_

"Thirty," he replied, warningly. The guards behind me shifted, and suddenly the room felt smaller. "That's my final offer, Augus."

I didn't reply. I stared into him and remained silent. We faced off, and the scope of the world collapsed to my eyes and his. A half minute passed, and the tension rose. The room darkened. After a minute he tilted his head like some great predatory bird, and his inhuman guards stepped up, not quite close enough to kill with their bare hands. Then two minutes passed, then three, and in the instant before I suspected he was going to give the fatal order and I opened my mouth to say _yes –_

His mechanical hand _crashed_ into the table hard enough to split wood.

"FINE," he roared. A moment later the girl walked into the room smooth as rain, bearing thick plates piled high with steaming food, and redglass mugs thick enough to cave in a skull. "Ten it is. Gods, Euphoria. Can you believe the balls on this kid?"

The girl smiled beautifully and poured a dark alcohol into the mugs, leaving quietly and gracefully, after he gave her small breast an indulgent fondle.

"She's mute and illiterate," the man said, smiling through metal teeth, inclining his head at the departing girl. He'd noticed my curious glance, apparently. "I made sure of it. Can't risk the _help_ talking to the men in blue."

"How did you find her?" I asked, pretending to be curious. _Better to keep him happy,_ I reminded myself.

"There's no end to the starving gutter trash on Mars," he chuckled. "Wasn't _that_ hard to find one willing to agree to my terms, in exchange for a secure job. The hard part was finding one I could stand to look at, _harder_ to find one who can deep throat. You can have her tonight, if you'd like." His one natural eye smiled. "Just mind the lack of tongue."

"I'll pass," I said, levelly. "I have a girlfriend now."

"Hah!" He almost _roared_ in laughter. "She better give the best head in this Sphere, if you're passing up my sweet little thing."

"She's special," I said, coldly. _Atra's better than this trash. Better than someone like him would ever know._

"Ah, young, true love." He chuckled, reading something in my expression. "That's a rare thing. Keep yours close, and safe." He smiled, slowly. "Entertain this old man, Augus. What's your girl's name?"

"No," I said, projecting as much sheer _warning_ into my voice as I could. "I know you, Gesler."

"There are many kinds of leverage," he agreed, smiling. "Some sweeter than others. You've remembered your lessons. So!" he turned to the food.

"Here we've got the house special, Augus. Actual grass-fed prime beef from my ranchers in the highlands, this isn't that synthetic crap you find almost everywhere nowadays. Tenderloin cuts dry-aged for half a year and cooked in the blue, my own _favorite_. With Marineras asparagus and pepper sauce imported direct from Oslo. All rounded off with a 2447 _glenfiddich_ , straight from my buyer in Edinburgh." He grinned, and offered his enormous hand. We shook, and I remembered how to _squeeze._ Some men are only capable of respecting strength.

"Enjoy, Augus. This grub is worth a year of a working man's salary. You've got yourself a deal." Just remember..." His expression changed. It was not a smile. No expression showing that many teeth could be called that. "If you can't follow through on our deal, I'll staple your face to a basketball and leave it, impaled on a spike, outside of CGS's gates."

"Of course," I replied. _If you can._

* * *

Minutes of small talk passed. Euphoria somehow presented a bowl of candied dates finer than anything I'd ever had before. I happily went through them one after another, occasionally switching between them and the main course – a strip of steak so fine it seemed to melt in the mouth.

 _Keep him happy,_ I thought, chewing while he cheerfully talked about his business. _Focus on the small talk, for now._

I turned to a projected map on the wall – a map of Mars, showing the limits of the four Autonomous Territories and the great mass of lawless, unclaimed territories in between - over sixty percent of the planet. That massive region, concentrated in the south, was, rarely, speckled with small green dots. I could guess at the meaning of other shapes and colors; the red lines representing pipelines, blue shaded regions showing aquifers, reservoirs. _Water is valuable on a desert planet._ White squares for spaceports, gold circles for active mines. But something confused me. Some of the symbols were _moving._

"What are the black dots?" I asked, honestly curious. _There's twenty-seven of them, total,_ I realized, counting.

"Those?" He grinned, slowly. "Those are mobile suits. Every single one of them on the planet, or in near-orbit. Gjallarhorn's base up in geostationary orbit has a permanent squad of five – each of the four Gjallarhorn Surface Bases has two. The government of each Autonomous Territory has two or three, and there are a few others owned by different mercenary companies, or the colonies in the Lawless Territories." His eyes flickered, glancing at the green dots in the nearly uninhabited Martian South.

"Every mobile suit is a strategic threat to any company or colony that doesn't have one of its own. My analysts have each of them code-named. _Those two,"_ he said, pointing at the two that were traveling in the Lawless Territory between Chryse and Hellas "are Jesse and James. Gjallarhorn's Surface Base Two in Hellas sent them to wipe out a group of thieves stupid enough to hit a half-metal convoy. What you're looking at, _Augus,_ is one of my great money-makers. Selling information on the planet's mobile suits so my customers can plan around them."

"Hm." I focused on the region south of Chryse. _He doesn't know about Barbatos._ "Not going to warn the thieves?"

"Heh." He smirked. "You don't seem to grasp the situation, Augus. That was _my customer's_ half-metal convoy they hit. _I'm_ the one paying Gjallarhorn to clean them out for him." He paused. His smirk widened, his eyes gloating. "Well, for the sake of accuracy, I'm actually paying the commander of Surface Base Two. _He's_ playing it off as a routine patrol to Colonel Coral up in Saisei."

He breathed, and continued.

"Even your own President Marabura is a customer of mine. Not a very good one, but that's, ah, _besides the point."_

My eyes widened as the words hit me. _Just how much corruption is there? How much of it is he behind?_

 _...He's only telling me this because he plans to kill me,_ I realized – no, _I knew._

And I realized that I was sitting across the table from one of the great distortions on the planet.

"That map must have been hard to set up." I said, keeping my tone level.

"I've got over a thousand people actively informing to my analysts, Augus. Over ten times that many sleeper informants, who, ah, _know who to talk to_ when something interesting comes up. I've got people in every government agency, tax department, and military base on the planet, people in every mercenary company worth a shit and every aristocrat's harem worth fucking. Even my girls," his smile widened "are useful. My most useful asset of all, sometimes. They get information from the people too powerful to be threatened, too wealthy to be bribed." He took a sip of his wine. "Information, Augus. _Information._ The most valuable currency of them all. People buy it from me, and I give them just enough to keep them in the great game."

Eventually, the girl brought out seconds, with a dessert I'd never seen before. I looked at it curiously.

"You've got quite the appetite, don't you, Augus?" Gesler asked, almost fondly.

"I've got three Alaya-Vijnana implants. I need to eat, a lot. Especially after using them."

"You went and got yourself _three_ whiskers? That's quite the death wish you've got. I've just got the one." His eyes flickered, and he smirked. "I wonder how many decades you've lost from your life expectancy."

I shrugged. _Wasn't exactly ever planning to live to be an old man._

"Please, try the chocolate _babka_." His grin widened, and he glanced at the pile of desserts. "The recipe comes direct from my homeland." He paused. "Not that I've ever been there."

"How is it your homeland, then?" I asked, curious.

" _Goyim_ like you wouldn't understand." He spoke, almost reverently. The shift in his mood was so abrupt it was _jarring._ "It's not that you're a space rat, you just aren't of the Tribe. _Israel_ is and always will be the home for all of Abraham's sons, no matter how far away the _diaspora_ takes us."

"Must be nice," I said, after a pause. "Having a home. Or at least the idea of one."

 _This is all for Tekkadan,_ I reminded myself, as I sat across the table and spoke with a monster like we were old friends. _But even monsters have their own stories._

"It is," he nodded, smiling. "even the thought... grounds you. Keeps things in _perspective._ Which gets me to wonder, Augus..." His smile did not change. Its nature turned.

"...What is your angle, what do you _want?_ You had to know what it could mean, coming to me. What _grand ambition"_ – he rolled the words over his tongue, as though weighing them, and finding them wanting – "keeps a little, nationless rat like you up at night?"

I breathed, and gathered my thoughts, all my pain, and focused. I remembered how we'd failed, and considered what would have happened to Tekkadan after my death, after Orga's - the destruction of our base and our very name. Visions came in flashes of thought. _They must have been scattered to the wind. Eugene and the others - whoever else made it out – didn't define us. Leaders like Orga and Akihiro couldn't be replaced. I doubt anyone else could have carried on Orga's orders. Meaning that Tekkadan died. Our brotherhood, our home, was shattered. Because we were weak and unable to protect ourselves – from traitors, from those stronger than us, from ourselves and our own stupid innocence. The only way to find the place where we belong is to create it – to build a home for ourselves, and to have the power to kill anyone who gets in our way. This is it. This is where it begins._

"...I want to build a home, for myself, for my friends," I said slowly, eyes narrowed and voice cold. "I want to get rid of those incompetent and weak _animals_ in the First Division who think that they're better than us." I continued. "I want to set up my own PMC, the strongest one in this Sphere, built on the ruins of CGS. I want Chryse. I want Mars. I want our independence from Earth and to throw Gjallarhorn back to where they came from." _For Orga. For Tekkadan. For me._

The room was still. And then, after the passing of minutes, Gesler began to laugh.

* * *

Many hours later, the streets were silent and still. In the distance, I could see the progress made by Kudelia's faction. The protesters had moved closer to the city's center, and were now beginning to settle in and find their sleep. The men and women had built a bizarrely complete tent city in the space of only a few hours, a sprawling community that sprouted from the streets like a field of mushrooms after the rain. The sun had long ago set below the western skyline, and I was not free.

Down the streets I walked, duffel bag casually slung over my shoulder.

The follow-up conversations with Gesler and his men had taken _hours,_ but I'd walked out with everything I'd asked for, and a few extras. The feel of numerous hidden weapons – all _given_ by my new _allies,_ of course – was a reassuring weight across my body, as was the feel of the extra... unique, items that I had stowed away in my duffel bag. All provided by Gesler's employees and resources.

Papers had been written, ready to be filed with the relevant authorities on the success of my mission. Papers to create a private military company in my own name. Bank accounts in my name had been opened, comfortably filled by Gesler's down payment in blood money.

I had the contact information of certain private mobile suit companies known for their privacy and their discretion, companies led by men who were willing to serve either side of the law – for the right price.

I had the contact information to a certain construction company with expertise in quietly managing large operations, and the understanding that they were willing to dig large holes while asking few questions.

I even had the contact information to Noblisse Gordon's own personal lawyer that he kept on retainer on Mars, and the understanding that I was due for a lengthy conversation with him in the next few days.

I had a new laptop and cell phone.

I had a new credit card – a _black_ one.

I had the routing number to an off-world bank account – Gesler had called it a _black account –_ to wire the contents of Marabura's accounts to.

I even had the title to a new car – nothing too expensive – ready to be picked up in the morning tomorrow. At least I'd earned a license by working with CGS.

I had the _implied understanding_ that Noblisse Gordon himself could be very interested in speaking with me – pending success, of course.

And I had a tail on me - a half-dozen of Gesler's hybrids, prepared to terminate me with prejudice if I tried to run.

For a man like Gesler, who on Noblisse Gordon's behalf wielded financial resources greater than that of quite a few _countries_ , the minor resources he'd provided me with were, to him, less than what a drop of water was to the ocean. He wasn't worried about money. He was worried about _discretion._

I was his entertainment for the day, a dubious investment with a low chance of success. _A gamble._ And, what's more - I knew too much. I knew who and what he was, and where to find him. He _suspected_ that I knew he worked for Noblisse Gordon, that he was neck-deep in illegal industries, spying and smuggling and slave and sex trading, earning blood money on his master's behalf. Noblisse Gordon carried out a constant campaign of immense, solar-system spanning effort to play the part of a legitimate businessman, to maintain a facade of a legitimacy that I'd walked right through the core of, into the cruel heart of his empire. Men like Gesler were integral in maintaining that image, keeping his own hands personally clean. I could not be allowed to endanger that carefully maintained mask.

 _I could not be allowed to live_ , except if I made myself not only trustworthy to these men, but _useful._ In the ordinary course of events, this was not likely. _In fact,_ Gesler no doubt quite thoroughly expected me to fail.

He was probably already imagining elaborately cruel execution techniques for wasting his time.

He knew it, I knew it, and what's more, he knew that I knew it.

 _So I have to make myself useful,_ I thought. I intended to do exactly that. Because working with these men was the only way I could get the resources I needed to change Tekkadan's fate, _in time_ to get us _off_ the rails that fate had put us on.

I kept walking.

Eventually, I stood before a certain office building, painted in the drab green and white of Chryse Guard Security, logo proudly emblazoned above the entrance.

I retreated to a nearby alley and opened the duffel bag. I stripped naked behind a garbage dumpster, ignoring the coupling of a pair of nearby teenaged protestors – and changed into a pair of janitor's overalls that I'd stolen from the base. _The weapons are too tightly guarded to steal from the base,_ I remembered, darkly. _But who'd think to steal the janitor crew's clothes? I've even got their ID card._

Then I opened a small case given to me by Gesler, and withdrew a particular piece of illegal contraband. Ancient, pre-war technology. It was the kind of specialized equipment that could never be purchased on the open market at _any_ price.

I slipped on my fake face.

It was the sort of equipment that would be a class two felony to merely _own_ in the Earth Sphere, and hadn't seen regular use in generations. it was the perfect infiltrator's garb, a melding of biotechnology and nanotechnology that was designed to interface with the _Alaya-Vijnana_ system in order to achieve perfect reconstruction of facial expression.

It was also not quite _just_ a fake face – it was more of a flesh suit that encompassed the whole of the upper body above the hip, with the exception of the eyes. Gesler hadn't trusted me with the complete version.

After a few minutes of getting used to the utterly bizarre feeling of wearing it, I entered the building through a side door near the rear alley dumpsters. A swipe of the stolen ID card got me in, and within minutes I was a service the elevator behind a cleaning cart, hefting a mop. I looked at it in disgust. _Even the brooms here are better than what we've got on the base._

I did not go up. I went _down._ The building had several levels of basement – storehouses for weapons and ammo and other gear, firing ranges, a maintenance garage for armored escort cars and mobile workers; even an indoor pool and a fully outfitted gymnasium.

But it was the lowest level that I'd come for. I was heading for what was in many ways the brain of CGS – the air-conditioned rooms where the building's servers were stored. A swipe of my ID card got me in – not into the server farm, my ID didn't have that access – but into the IT office. It was a skeleton crew at this time of night, only four men of varying ages sitting at their stations. They didn't even glance at me as I walked past with my cleaning cart.

A minute later I was standing in the back of the offices, at a door stamped 'SECURITY' in bold back lettering. My card got me in. I sighed in relief. _I wasn't sure if that would work._

The room was small, dimly lit. There were two overweight men sitting in front of a wall-spanning screen of screens; a view to every security camera in the tower, to the cameras at CGS's remote base, even cameras watching over estates and corporate headquarters in the downtown and the northern suburbs. _The Second Division has cameras on current CGS clients?_ There was a lot about the deep operations of CGS that I'd never learned.

One of them turned to me, boredom writ deep in his features.

"I'm here for the garbage, sir." I said, quietly.

He nodded, and silently turned back to his screen.

I shut the door.

A few steps later, my knife was six inches into the back of his neck, severing the brain stem above the first vertebrae, slipping just beneath the skull. I could feel the metal _grind_ against bone through the metal of the blade. His body jittered in the chair in the seconds it took for it to realize that it was dead.

The other man turned. "Wha-"

My throwing knife caught him at the crown of the throat, sinking into his voicebox. He gurgled in an attempt at a scream. I was on him, grabbing him by the hair and wrenching him forward, _punching_ the blade in deep enough that the tip of it emerged from the back of his neck – severing the brain stem from the _other_ direction.

He sank to the floor limply.

The room was silent.

 _It's strange how little they bled if you kill without severing the blood vessels_ , I reflected, looking over my work.

I emptied and changed the garbage can, quickly. _Cover for when I leave._ I took the knives and quickly cleaned them – the cleaning cart was good for something, at least, and it wasn't in me to mistreat good steel. _And they might have been able to track down Gesler through the knives if I'd left them._

Not that I genuinely believed that. The blades were probably another level of Gesler's test. I just couldn't see how. Not yet.

It took me a few minutes, but I eventually figured out how to shut the recording systems down. The screens went dark as all of CGS's assets everywhere no longer had an eye watching over them. _And all of the alarms are now offline._

I left the room and locked the door behind me. None of the other employees so much as blinked at me. They hadn't heard a thing. I would have felt more nervous, if I couldn't feel the reassuring weight of the half-dozen knives in my inner jacket pockets, and the silenced pistol deeper within. I would have used the gun rather than the knives, but in my experience, silencers weren't silent _enough_ , not in close-range work like this.

A few minutes and a short elevator ride later, the security cameras followed me as I entered the lobby. _But no one is watching now,_ I thought, with an internal smirk.

This small skyscraper – twenty stories or so above ground – had three quarters of those floors devoted to housing, arming, and training the four hundred or so members of the Second Division.

Four of them were on watch at the side entrances, another dozen posted behind certain desks and next to the main entrance. Podiums covered by cloth were flanking the main entrance; the turrets for a pair of .50 caliber machine guns.

Dozens of the Second Division were entertaining themselves at the bar in the back of the lobby, despite the late hour. A glance told me that they'd brought in a half dozen pole dancers, and that the men were betting on strip teases, literally throwing cash at the girls on the stage. _Did they just finish a job?_ I hadn't been expecting so many of them to be in the building tonight. I hadn't expected to walk into a literal _party._

 _This might be useful,_ I realized, staring into the crowd. _Marabura's in there._ I could see the owner and president of CGS at the front of the crowd, throwing more cash at the women than anyone else. _The man's dead drunk on his feet._

I walked past the lobby, heading for the elevators in the building's rear. Barely looking at me, a guard let me pass after a confirmation of my stolen card. I pressed the button for the offices in the building's top floor and waited, quietly remembering what I could. I'd never interacted much with this Division.

 _The First and Third Divisions rarely had anything to do with the Second_ , I remembered. The forces posted to the base south of Chryse were normally used to escort and defend Chryse's interests throughout the region. We'd sometimes protect convoys going to or from the city, or root out marauding bandits in the highlands. Sometimes we'd protect trans-region infrastructure against PMCs sent from the other autonomous regions, or fight the marauders from the lawless no-mans-lands that encompassed over sixty percent of the planet – and sometimes we'd even fight pirates in high-altitude orbit. However - most jobs were more boring than watching paint dry. It was rare that something actually happened. Those were the good days.

The bad days were different. On those days, the jobs became frantic and full of fear; a test of skill and sheer _luck_ where death could come at any moment. It was an intense and brutal life. Any and every job could become a thing of constant, low-grade war, where a decisive action couldn't be taken and we'd be stuck for _days_ sieging or being sieged by someone else. That happened a lot less often under Orga's leadership.

Overshadowing it all was the mindless fear that _on this one day_ we'd have the shit enough luck to fight an enemy with the money to actually afford a mobile suit. Mobile suits were, for all practical purposes, to ninety-nine percent of the human race, _invincible._ Everyone knew that only a mobile suit could counter a mobile suit. Even the strongest artillery that a mobile worker or a tank or a helicopter could equip, or the strongest rocket launcher a person could carry, would only dent the paint on nano-laminated armor reinforced by Ahab Wave Resonance.

Fortunately, only one or two of the thirty or so PMCs on the planet could afford even _one_ mobile suit.

 _Unfortunately_ , CGS wasn't one of them.

 _That isn't CGS's fault_ , I knew. Marabura actually led one of the most profitable PMCs on the planet. He just hoarded all of the cash for himself. The man was a billionaire, who took great pains to let _no one_ except his accountants find out about that fact.

Chryse's peace and security was bought and paid for by a constant campaign of blood in the territories, nearly unknown to the public.

The Second Division was different from us, and worked differently. _More professionally._ It operated solely in the city, and was a more heavily armed security alternative to the Colonial Police Forces. They only had a few mobile workers. Their specialty was private security for the wealthy and the powerful, and thanks to that they earned most of CGS's profits.

I remembered that they'd defected from CGS after our revolt at the base. Kudelia had used a strange word for it – a lot of the kids had laughed when took me a few times to get the pronunciation right. It was a _coup d'état_ – that's what we did when we stole the base, executing the First Division's leaders and sending the rest of them to _walk_ back to Chryse.

Not long after, this very building was abandoned by the Second Division – their commander abandoned Marabura and set up his own company. He took with him most of CGS's money – over eighty percent of it, in accounts that Dexter Culastor hadn't been able to recover in time.

They hadn't been missed. The money had been.

The elevator door opened, revealing a dark hallway leading to a thick reinforced-steel door. A keypad dimly shone next to the door handle.

 _I'm here for all of it._

I carefully looked over the door. There was no other way through. The metal of the door's frame curved into the walls – a complete and seamless construction that looked _grown_ rather than built, and looked like it could take a blast straight on from a Mobile Suit's anti-warship 170mm autocannon.

 _I'd have to bring the building to the ground to get through here,_ I knew instinctively. _The janitor's ID card won't work_.

But the password did.

 _Sasai._

The door opened, and I smirked. _We never did figure out what that meant._ I moved quickly through Marabura's private apartment, ignoring the security cameras. _No one's watching now._

It took me a minute to find Marabura's personal office. I tried not to gape at the interior decorations. He had an entire _wall_ of his office dedicated to Mexican tequilas. The _other_ wall was nothing but collector's rifles and handguns, some over six hundred years old, judging from the labels. _It's like his office on the CGS base, but... more. Much more._

This was my second time here. Right now, the offices weren't _anything_ like what they'd been the first time around, when Orga – with me and Tekkadan's other leaders in tow – had toured the building's pillaged corpse.

Marabura's computer was interesting. Not quite old, but well-worn, and very obviously used daily. The desktop was neatly organized, showing folders that routed to _decades_ of records; receipts, e-mails, contacts, voice recordings, and so much more. _Can't believe he actually uses the same password for everything._ He had company records going back for longer than I'd ever imagined finding _._ I could only imagine what hidden contacts and resources there were. I copied the computer's contents, including a back-up of his e-mails, to a flash drive I'd brought. _I'll need it later,_ I knew.

I logged into his banking accounts; there was for any practical purpose no division between his personal accounts and CGS's. He treated the company's personal funds just like his own. _Then again, they are_ , I considered, thinking. _He owns the entire company, after all._

It was a lesson worth remembering.

I emptied every single cash _galar_ I could find into Gesler's black account. I had to go through over a dozen accounts total, across more than one banking company. There was more – stock receipts, bonds, but not much. Less than five percent of his assets. _He really likes keeping it all in cash._

A few minutes later, I was looting the hidden safe built into the office wall, behind a gun-shelf. The same password, _again._ The documents in here were irreplaceable – we'd never gotten these at all, the first time around. Working around the loss of these documents had kept Orga running frantic for _weeks._

The deeds to the office tower and the remote base, and a few safe-houses. Blueprints. Insurance documents. Incorporation papers. Property tax receipts. The papers that there weren't electronic copies of _anywhere_ outside of colonial government archives, the papers that gave CGS legitimacy as an operating business.

I stole it all.

A quarter of an hour later, I was long gone. I hailed down Gesler's hybrids, parked in an alleyway near the tower, and we began the return to his offices. It was past midnight.

My new cell phone began to ring. It took me a few seconds to figure it – _ah, there._

" _Mr. Augus,"_ said Gesler, sounding pleased. "My accountants have sent me the transfer confirmations. Congratulations. They tell me that you're now Chryse's newest billionaire." I could _hear_ the smirk through the phone. "Gordon Industries looks forward to doing business with you."

"Good." My grip on the phone tightened. "Is this when you have me shot in an alley, and take it all for yourself?"

" _Fuck no."_ He actually sounded _insulted._ "I'm an information broker, Augus. I don't turn on my clients, I don't lie to them - not for any price. And you're now a client. My reputation for honesty - once a deal is struck, of course - is worth more than this chump change." He paused. "Right, that reminds me. Your new company – what'll you call it?"

"Tekkadan," I said.

* * *

 _Gjallarhorn Top Secret (Black, Archduke) Archives Index Entry #10719 (A.K.R.A. #74)_

 _Regarding Mars in the Era of Troubles (colloquially called the First Solar System War, The Exodus War, the Long Wars, or, during specific stages of the conflict; the First China-United States Pacific War, The United Nations War, The Greater Depression Wars, World War III, The Colonial Independence Wars, The Seven Day Civil War, The Great Purge, The Nanotechnology Wars, The War of the Seven Dukes, The Gundam War, The Ragnarök War, Moonfall, the Long Winter War, The Cold Spring Conflicts – also collectively, informally called the Calamity War, which lasted for roughly thirty-two years):_

 _Prior to the onset of the Era of Troubles (determined by academic consensus to begin with the collapse of the United Nations following the onset of the China-United States Pacific War in 2094), the terraforming of Mars was for a period of roughly seventy years the largest single investment outlay in the history of civilization (consuming roughly 12.47 percent of the Solar System's gross national product over this time by annum)._

 _Following the Washington Treaties in 2029 that determined the allocation of Martian territory, governed by the principle of "the nation that invests the most gets the most" The Great Red Land Grab (in association with the discovery of gold at Olympus Mons) is believed by economists to have been the impetus for the greatest stock market bubble in economic history. The bulk of Martian terraforming efforts were governed by the treaty, and occurred throughout the late twenty-first century. The collapse of the global stock markets following the China-United States War and the synchronous generational collapse of the global labor markets due to the market use of primitive "bottom up" artificial intelligences provided momentum to pre-existing forces that led to the splintering of the United Nations and the breakdown of international political dialogue._

 _Several Outer Sphere colonies in the Moon Sphere, led by First Marshal Aarush Kaieru's oligarchical Independence Faction, chose at this time to break away from Earth hegemony, citing taxation, political under-representation, lack of effective government services, and an unwillingness to get involved in the conflicts erupting throughout the Earth Sphere. His supporters installed him as the King-Regent of a monarchy claiming to govern all the colonies, final coronation pending on the end of hostilities._

 _Prime Minister Murael Noventa's democratic Remain Faction charged the Independence Faction with coup d'etat, conspiracy, attempted assassination of the Prime Minister, fostering bureaucratic corruption, and treachery of longstanding allies. Both sides charged the other with treason. In the midst of negotiations between the two sides, during the summit and assembly of the colonial ambassadors plenipotentiary, Kaieru commenced what would later be called the Seven-Day Civil War. Several colonies under the control of Murael Noventa's Remain faction were conquered within hours by blitzkrieg tactics, and other strategic assets were destroyed by long-range assaults. The other colonies surrendered following the theft-by-espionage of the Remain Faction's nuclear stockpile, executed by break-away special forces under the co-ordination of highly placed Independence spies (see attached report F for details). Noventa was publicly executed later shortly after the cessation of hostilities._

 _Aarush Kaieru's son, ace pilot and Luna special forces division commander Agnika Kaieru, disappeared during this time. See A.K.R.A. #01, #02, #03, for Kaieru's autobiographical report._

 _This combination of factors led to the collapse of the Nerio Company – the internationally incorporated company granted monopoly over the terraforming of Mars. The company was administered by the United Nations and headquartered in New York, per regulations in the Treaties (see attachment G, S.3 for details). Following bankruptcy and liquidation, the company's assets and divisions were privatized, largely purchased by Kaieru's allies. Nerio Company's remaining employees were tasked with the winding-down of terraforming activities, and to focus on maintenance of existing progress in the Martian biosphere._

 _The Martian citizen population stands at 178,901,012 persons as of the 2440, or P.D. 323, census. The noncitizen population is unknown but estimated to be at least double the citizen population._

* * *

I'm valuing a galar at one penny – one hundred galars would convert to one dollar USD.

PMC = Private Military Contractor

Remember - I live on a diet of beer, pizza, and reviews!


	6. So you want to become a miner?

I don't own Iron Blooded Orphans.

* * *

It was the early morning, just after sunrise, and I was driving.

Chryse's western districts were the domicile of the Arbrau Federation's heavy industry on Mars. A sandstorm-scarred structure of bare concrete stretched its low immensity across the near skyline, like the tusk of a dead god sinking into the rusting earth. _Chryse's Central Railway Terminal_ , I remembered.

Heavy armored trains were snaking in and out of the great terminal as though it was a mechanical den, a nest of metal vipers. A great nexus of civilization wrought in iron and oil, sending and receiving supplies from across the planet. With a bare glance I could see the machine gunnery and autocannons built into every twelfth railway car. These battle-scarred links in the great trains were heavier than the others, sometimes scoured by gunshot, the dark scars of old battles. With every pass, gravel and dull red dust blasted into the air, through the grating of the rusting fences near the tracks, crowned in jagged barbed-wire.

I kept my distance, not wanting to scratch the paint on my new car.

 _In a lot of ways,_ I thought, glancing at the trains. _They're the real soldiers._

Private military companies like the CGS First and Third Divisions almost entirely played a game of defense at the borders of the Lawless Territories. Static defense against marauders pushing into the civilized regions, pre-emptive attacks to destroy and disperse, a defense of a different flavor. We only operated at the edges, protecting what was _in_ from what was _out there._

The men staffing the trains, however, pushed into the far depths of the planet's dark and savage heart. For a living. _Every day._

I couldn't imagine it.

I was a space rat, by birth. _A free-man,_ officially. I wasn't a citizen, of Arbrau or anywhere else. I couldn't vote, not that I'd ever been interested in that. I would never work in government, never rise to a rank higher than cannon fodder in any military or police force. But I was _free_ , able to go anywhere else that my wallet and will could take me, able to work nearly any other job.

Human Debris were different.

Technically, Human Debris didn't even exist. They were the children of the Lawless Territories, the great darkness beyond the edges of civilization. _Gjallarhorn's_ civilization. Children who were born without their births being registered at a hospital under the rule of a National Federation.

Lower than even bastards, Human Debris had no rights. Unrecognized by any law, they were not human beings. Even dogs had more rights under the law than they did. Unable to work, unable to seek protection under the law, in any court, they could be shot on the street in the middle of Chryse's Sixth Avenue and give the shooter nothing more than a shortly remembered scandal on the twentieth page or so of the weekend edition of the Chryse Herald.

Practically speaking, of course, this didn't happen. The Colonial Police – or, as the apologists would put it, on the rare occasion that someone failed at their job and the scandals of the dark fell into the light of day, ' _rogue officers operating on their own initiative' –_ would simply sell any particularly unfortunate Human Debris they caught to slave traders after a short stay in a holding cell.

This, of course, meant that Human Debris could only protect themselves, could only live under a clear blue sky of their own in the Lawless Territories, through which these trains would soon pass. There, in the one place of refuge for Human Debris, they could easily fall prey to the elements, to slaver raids, even to themselves.

It was a curious thing about being a Human Debris, an existence lesser than a human being. Akihiro's stories were as cruel as they were senseless, and empty.

When you could literally, at any time, sell your own brother, your own village, built in some dusty crag, to a slave trader for a profit, trust became a scarce thing. Human Debris villages stayed small, and mobile. Small enough that they could know who to trust, mobile enough to flee on the day that that trust was inevitably betrayed, all for a few _galars._ It always was, eventually.

To be Human Debris was to walk with death.

I drove west, taking a left onto the highway. The great trainyard fell into the distance of my rear-view mirror, and my thoughts churned.

In a sane world, this would have never happened. Everyone would be born a free-man. _A citizen_ , even. But when the system was built by those who profited from the labor of those _outside_ of the system, it was in their interest to keep the laws out of date, for centuries. To keep the slaves as slaves, forever.

I kept driving, and time passed, in hours, in kilometers. The highway passed through the outer edges of the city, and civilization became scarcer. Industrial suburbs, dense at first, grew ever thinner, degrading to rural countryside at the city's very border. Beyond were kilometers and kilometers of green farmland, great green circles in the red desert. The surest sign of water-ultraefficient drip irrigation. Curious, I slowed the car, and closely took a look at the fields. _They grow wheat here_ , I realized. _Better land than Miss Sakura's._

I'd never been out this way before.

Time passed, and then there was nothing, nothing but dull red rock and sand, for _hours_. I stopped at a highway rest-stop for a quick breakfast and a charge of the car's battery, and moved on, noticing the slight upwards incline. I eventually came to a bridge – _no, a dam_ \- and drove over the outer lip of one of Chryse's reservoirs, fed by the canyon rivers of the mountainous southwestern highlands. The view was magnificent. I could see the beginnings of forest – actual forest – growing on the reservoir's shores.

I kept driving, passing several mines. A few were exhausted – empty and abandoned. Immense, kilometers-deep pits dug into the desert. I could see roads switch-backing up the cliff-sides into the highlands above, leading to more even mines, probably. In the shadow of a certain cliff I could see a small settlement. _A town for workers,_ I guessed.

Eventually, farmland country returned, and near the border of Arbrau Territory itself, at the foot of a great pile of scree, below the dark walls of a cliff two kilometers tall _– Chryse and all its territory was built into a complex of ancient seafloor canyons,_ I remembered Kudelia saying _–_ I found my destination.

A city, surrounded by thick black walls sixty feet high.

I pulled into a parking lot of pounded gravel, after the guards let me through the gate of the walled city. The guards dispatched a car that escorted me to a private lot deeper within. A weather-scarred man walked up to me as I exited the car. He was escorted by a pair of armed men wearing dull red suits. I looked them over, taking in the armor they wore underneath their outerwear, the bulge of holstered pistols in inner pockets. _Private soldiers? Mercenaries?_

"Mikazuki Augus?" His voice was lightly accented, the _tang_ of those living on the frontier.

"Yeah," I said.

"John." His voice was gruff, and we shook hands. His hands were thick with callus, and felt like old leather. He held my attention through crease-lined, brown eyes. "John Powell. Baron of the Vedra and Maumee _Vallis._ "

 _A nobleman? Gleser didn't mention that._ I looked him over, searching for detail. On a second glance I realized that his clothing, which seemed cheap, shabby at first, wasn't – _it was well worn._ The old man's clothes had an understated solidity, outdoors-gear, the sort of clothing far more expensive than it first appeared because it could survive in any element, over any terrain. Over his left breast he wore an insignia of the Seven Stars. _He really is a Gjallarhorn aristocrat,_ I realized.

He did not look like a typical noble.

He was not a big man. His form was slight, and a growth of white stubble followed along his jawline, like the shadow of snow. But his limbs were solid, wiry with cords of muscle that rippled under his wrinkling skin like braided steel cabling. His form was balanced, his feet spread to exactly the width of his shoulders. He looked like an old root that could stand, unbent, through the worst winter sandstorm.

"Leo sent word you were coming." He spoke neutrally, ignoring formalities and small talk. "Something about pre-war technology that needs digging?"

"Yeah," I said. _Gesler said I could trust him. Can I?_ "There's a mobile suit buried at the edge of Lawless Territory, maybe three hundred kilometers southeast of here. I need someone, someone who can keep secrets, to dig it out of there. I might have other, bigger jobs for you after it's done if you can do it quickly."

"How quickly are we talking about, Mr. Augus?" His voice was gruff, neutral.

"I'd like it done in the next two weeks." I admitted. "Three at most." _It'll take weeks just to get Flauros ready to fight. I don't have much time._

"How deep down is it buried?" He asked.

"Um." I tried to remember. "Seven, eight meters, I think. Just loose sand from the storms."

" _Weeks?"_ Powell's lips turned, the shadow of a smirk. "I'll have it out for you in _days._ Follow me, and come on in. Let's talk business over lunch with my boys. I'll tour you through my company town on the way."

"Sure," I said. _Company town?_

I followed him into the depths of a yard for mining equipment that stretched along the walls for kilometers. Massive earth-moving trucks the size of houses, and _things_ that I didn't have the first clue about. I looked up at a signpost of stainless steel above me. _Powell and Sons Mining and Mining Services Motorized Equipment Yard,_ it said.

We walked beyond, up and over a ridge-line, and were suddenly looking over what could only be described as a _village. Almost a small city, I thought._ Unlike the deserts and sparse, scattered farmland outside the gates, this place had _wealth._ Powell talked animatedly about the history of the family business, stretching back to the Calamity War, as I looked around.

 _A few thousand people live here,_ I judged. _Executives. Office workers. Tradesmen._

It looked just like a suburban community in Chryse's wealthy northern districts. There was a shopping mall. The houses stretched upwards for three stories, flanked by lawns of actual grass. There was a car or two in every driveway, even _swimming pools_ in a few backyards.

Water was precious on the planet-wide desert of Mars. I could expect to see wealth like this near Chryse's core – but here, at the edge of civilization?

 _What is this place?_

I peered off into the distance. _This place has its own spaceport,_ I realized.

We walked through a sprawling corporate campus of glass and steel. Hundreds of affluent-looking men and women were working within. I could see them through the windows, wearing suits.

In the distance, built deep into a kilometer-tall canyon-wall, there was a fortress. Mobile workers flanked the entrances, and autocannon turret batteries looked down from the cliff's side, hundreds of meters above ground.

 _That's his house?_

* * *

I could only look around, curious. Baron Powell's estate was _fascinating._ Pictures of past generations of Powells standing proudly at the inaugurations of new mines, the battles won to protect them. Marriages. Maps and painted vistas of their harsh lands. Family autobiographies. Festivals in the towns and cities under their protection. And every shelf, every table, had a strange crystal or polished rock atop it. Some of them had almost _burned_ -looking scour-marks dug deep into their sides. _Meteorites?_

A sound shook me out of my distraction.

" – so that bandit group last week was deep on our six, deep enough to commence anal-by-buckshot, and then Clay here takes out a box of energy bars and starts _throwing them_ out over the side of our Mobile Worker's cockpit lid. Guess what _they_ do? They take one ugly look at each-other and start engaging _themselves."_

The air split with laughter. The dining room table shook as grown men pounded their fists against the thick metal.

We were sitting in a dining room carved into a cliff's side, hundreds of feet above the canyon floor, above a private _city_. It was almost jarring, until I remembered why I was here.

"Human Debris," said a big man, cheeks flushed. He'd been pounding the great mass of his beer-gut, roaring with laughter. "Stupid inbred dust-scum. Gotta love em."

"Hey." Another man, skinnier, shook his head, grinning. "They can be dangerous, sometimes." He paused, and grinned, lecherously. "To their little sisters."

The room paused for a moment, and then the room _shook_ with savage laughter.

"tmi..." said a teenaged girl in black, poking at her bacon and eggs, bored.

"Sorry, sorry, Merelia. We forget that you're still a vi-."

She flicked a clump of scrambled egg at her older brother's eye. He didn't quite dodge, and it ran greasily down his ear. A servant cleaned it from the floor. He grinned. "Don't remind me," she said, in a monotone. "That guy..."

"Hey. Don't blame us for that gutless little pansy's – "

"I just thought he had a dick." Her eyes flickered. "In more than the one sense."

"Enough." Powell spoke, leaning forward. "We don't need to entertain our guest with the Human Debris hunts you kids get into when you're bored. We've got a potential customer enjoying our hearth and home. Some politeness is called for."

The Powell family's eyes turned to me.

 _They aren't monsters,_ I grimly reminded myself, looking around the table. _They just live near the Chryse borders. People like this are some of the first to get hit by raiders. They've got a hard life. Compared to most nobles._

It was hard to remind myself of that, looking at this wealth.

It had been a while since I'd lived on the streets. Seven and a half years and two lifetimes. The sheer _cruelty_ of even the civilians on the frontiers was something I'd buried deep in my memories. Scenes like this were _exactly_ the reason why Kudelia needed to succeed. _It'll never change, not until Mars stands on its own,_ I knew.

"Yeah," I said, levelly. "Let's talk. But, first..."

My eyes flickered towards the servants, and Powell shooed them from the room. I had the family's attention.

"You can't let _anyone_ outside your company know about the job." I turned to the baron's sons. "I'm here because I know where a buried mobile suit is, and I need a company to excavate and move it. I need the mobile suit delivered to a certain warehouse in the industrial district, without anyone who isn't already in this room finding out."

"I wouldn't worry about that," Powell said, gruffly. "For a dig of this size, we don't need to bring in our employees. We can handle it in-family."

"Father." The oldest son, Clay, spoke. His tone was serious. "A mobile suit excavation is... a big deal."

I raised my eyebrows.

"My boy means to say that it's _extremely_ illegal, Mr. Augus. Civilians need a special Duke or Federation level license to own or salvage one. He's just too polite to say it." He turned to his son.

"Don't you worry about your words, Clay. We're in good company at this table."

An understanding passed between them, somehow. I couldn't read into it. Clay – the older son - nodded, and leaned forward, speaking to me.

"House Powell can keep this job in the dark, Mr. Augus. We'll agree to the job, pending details. We need to know we _can_ keep this quiet. First, what are the site co-ordinates?"

"Here." I slid a tablet computer to him. "I wrote down the details."

"Huh." He turned to his father, after a quick read. "Isn't this Teiwaz territory? That old pre-war mine site they've been talking about in the papers?"

His father started. "Give me that thing."

After a minute, his father sighed, folding his arms on the table." Hm." Disappointment was written upon his features. "So it is." He turned to me. "We aren't going to trespass onto Teiwaz territory for a dig of this level, Mr. Augus. Not for any price."

"No." I leaned forward. "It isn't Teiwaz territory. Not _yet._ I'm bidding against them for the property. I expect to win."

"You're bidding –" he paused, coughing for a moment. "Against _Teiwaz?_ Do you have a death wish?"

In my peripheral vision, the second brother – the skinny one, leaned over to his sister, whose eyes were wide, uncomprehending. ' _The Jupiter Mafia,'_ he whispered to her.

"Do you remember who referred me to you? We're allies, now."

"That I do." He brightened, suddenly grinning, and leaned back in his seat. "Leo's a slippery one, but if there's anyone on the planet who can get Teiwaz to back off, short of Gjallarhorn, it would be him, all right." He hesitated, and his eyes flickered.

"You're planning to go into mining, Mr. Augus? You look like you can't be more than nineteen or twenty, by the look of you." _I would be_ _seventeen now,_ I thought, grimly. _But I'm nearly twenty._ He continued. "Mining is reliable, but it isn't quick. And it takes a _great deal_ of up-front investment before you can start making a return. Are you sure you want to do this?"

I leaned forward. "I've got the money," I said. "And I need more, for my other plans. I need the suit, and I need the mine, before I can move to the next stage of what I'm building." _And_ _I won't let anyone else get near the bird,_ I thought, grimly _._ "This mine is a part of that."

"Yeah," he nodded, gruffly. "Some of my geologists did the initial surveying of the site after the re-discovery a few years back. Federation seismologists found the damn thing. They contracted us. We had to go old school with the seismics and bring out a set of thumpers. There's a lot of wavelength interference in that area."

I started in my seat, and my eyes narrowed. " _Wavelength_ _interference_?"

He blinked, surprised at my tone. "It's not so uncommon around pre-war ruins. There's a lot of cracked pre-war Ahab reactors still buried out there. Even after centuries they can still emit some nasty particles." He sighed, disgusted. "Some salvagers hunt for Ahab interference points, but it's only one time in fifty they find a usable reactor." He spat. "Far as I'm concerned they've got my blessing to go get themselves cancer. Salvagers are the scum of the earth."

I raised my eyebrows, and he clarified.

"Pray that you never need to clean up after a cracked Ahab reactor on your land, Mr. Augus. They're tough nuts to crack, but when they do, boy, you've got a class three environmental hazard radiating its merry little heart out on your land." His eyes narrowed. "Salvagers just leave them lying out there on the dirt. That's one of the reasons why, out here on the frontier, we've got an understanding with the local patrols to shoot them all on sight."

"Hm." I grunted, neutrally. _I wonder how many Human Debris they've killed. Dozens? Thousands?_

He continued. "I would have sent in a bid for the mine myself, but I've been, ah, _led to understand_ by the Governor that that would be undesirable."

"Why?" _I don't know enough,_ I thought.

"I already own a dozen other, smaller, mines, and control just under a half million kilometers of territory in Vedra and Maumee. If I was any wealthier I'd be a duke. They don't want me in Chryse politics, and I don't want to _be_ more involved than I already am. My family has enough to worry about here on the frontier. Our forces are stretched thin as it is."

I nodded. "Makes sense. But I'm going to develop that mine. I'd like your help for that, after – but first, the mobile suit."

He nodded. "The mine is still Gjallarhorn public land until bidding is finalized. As a baron, you were right to come to me. I can go to and from at will. And, longer term, if you'd be willing to contract my family to develop the site, we'd be, ah, _interested_. It would be a big job for us." He paused. "Our biggest in years, truth be told. Business has gone to the dogs in the past decade." He sighed. "Not enough buyers for warships and mobile suits, therefore not enough buyers for nanolaminated plate. Meaning that half-metal futures prices at the Chryse Commodity Exchange are dogshit nowadays."

I leaned forward.

"Prices might be going up soon."

"Huh." He folded his arms on the table, leaning back. _"If_ that were true, then, from one man of business to another, you'd be well advised to also take a look at the big nanolaminate manufactory in Chryse. Own the place to process your own ore. The profits are a lot better, that way. Vertical integration, Mr. Augus."

I considered it. "Why that one?"

"Aside from being the biggest and lowest-cost fabricator facility on the planet..." he grinned like a shark. "The plant also went bankrupt last month. It's in receivership now."

My interest was up. "What happened?"

"Duke Boreas took out a lien against it to fund his gambling habit and lost _big._ My friends tell me that Lord Fareed might strip him of rank and title for it. The plant's finances are fine otherwise. Even in the current economy."

"All right. I'll look into it," I said. _Fareed?_

"Right." He seemed to hesitate. "You're clearly a wealthy and well connected young man, Mr. Augus. Why come to us?"

I weighed my response for a few seconds. "My company is very new, Mr. Powell. I don't have the people yet. Just the money to put them to work. I've got plans, and I need resources, _allies,_ to make it happen."

He nodded.

"May the Powell family be counted among them. We'll have your mobile suit delivered in a few days."

"Good," I said. "As for the rest..."

"Right," he said. "Aside from the mine, you mentioned another follow-up job, afterwards?"

"Hm." I nodded. "I'll be buying the CGS frontier base, soon. Most of the base has been abandoned and buried since the Calamity War. I'll need those areas excavated. Several levels of underground hangars." I shrugged. "I don't know what's down there."

Powell raised his eyebrows. "Huh. That sounds... unexpected. You want us for a large salvage job?"

"The base used to be a spaceport terminal." I explained. "It was all built on top of an underground mine. CGS is only using a small part of the base. I want to excavate and renovate the rest of it, turn it into my headquarters. Get the spaceport going again. Reactivate _that_ mine too, later on."

"Do you know any details?" Powell's oldest son – Clay, the big man, asked.

I tried to remember.

"The one hangar CGS still uses can fit four mobile suits," I said, after a pause. "There's at least three levels of hangars buried underneath that one. I don't know anything about the mine, just that there's an underground tunnel going all the way to Chryse, starting from the entrance. The entrance is buried"

Powell leaned forward. His eyes were inscrutable. "How big is it? The tunnel, that is."

"...big enough for a mobile worker to drive through." I vaguely remembered. "There were a lot of pipes and cables. It looked high-tech."

"That..." Powell said, hesitantly, before turning to his two younger children. The atmosphere in the room changed. He spoke in a voice of command. Now he finally looked the part of a baron of Gjallarhorn.

"Leave us."

All three rose without a word and went for the door. His voice followed them.

"Clay, you may stay. You're my heir, after all."

He returned to his seat silently. The baron turned to me again.

"Mr. Augus, I suspect that what you've found may not be a mine at all." His voice was heavy.

"Huh?"

"Did you see any mine carts? Any pieces of ore lying on the floor of the tunnel?"

My memories were vague. I'd only seen the tunnel for scarce moments, carried to and from on top of Hush's shoulder.

"No," I said, uncertain.

He sighed, and leaned back in his chair.

"You're new to mining, Mr. Augus. You may not have realized, but before the war there were very few mines on the planet. None of them were underground. They were all open-pit, or even use banned mountain-top-removal methods. Some of the operators even used nuclear bombs to break open the land. There was little concern for the environment, back then. And _no one_ would have built a spaceport directly atop a mine, then or now. What you're describing is impossible." He paused. "And what mine would have mobile suit hangars, anyway?"

"What is it, then?"

"I'd have to go and look for myself, but, from what you've said, I suspect that this base of yours was built on top o' the ruins of a pre-war research facility."

Powell continued, seeing my blank expression.

"During the War of the Seven Dukes, Mars separated from the Earth Sphere, along with the other colonies. This you should know." I nodded, and he continued.

"There were... elements, of the pre-war separatist oligarchy that were researching and producing illegal weapons. That research all occurred underground, beyond satellite detection. After Agnika Kaieru retook the planet from the separatists, anything having to do with that research was destroyed. But Gjallarhorn never managed to find all of the facilities." He paused, before continuing, seeming to consider his words carefully.

"What you're describing sounds... familiar. My great, great grandfather found another of these facilities, not long after the war, buried in a volcanic crater near Ascraeus Mons in the Tharsis Region. I don't know exactly what he found in there, but he and his men died screaming. Hours later, Gjallarhorn's orbiting Ares base launched a salvo of nuclear missiles. We never learned anything else." He sighed, his voice heavy.

"There was a total media blackout for months afterwards. We were later told by an Archduke of the Seven Stars that our House would be stripped of rank and title if we pried any further into the matter. So, the incident has been kept a House Secret, passed down from father to son with each generation. So that we don't repeat our ancestor's mistake." He turned to his son, eyes serious.

"And now you know, Clay."

The young man was lying back in his seat, speechless.

"Mikazuki Augus," the baron's eyes were on me. "House Powell will be glad to aid you with your mobile suit, and the half-metal mine, if you win in your bid against Teiwaz. But we cannot agree to excavating the depths of your base. As a baron of Gjallarhorn, I, gently, suggest that you pry no further into the matter. Let the buried stay buried."

* * *

Hours later, as the sun set, I was back in the territorial capital at a steakhouse across the street from Chryse College. I'd taken a liking to the area after seeing it yesterday, and, honestly, I'd enjoyed Gesler's steak enough that I wanted more of my own. _Much more._ The cost of actual, not synthetic, steak was stunning. _But it's not like I need to worry about that any more,_ I thought, waiting for my food.

It was a Friday night, and I could the sound of cheering coming from the protestor camps outside. The street was still full of them, but they were peaceful. It was now less of a protest and more of a party, one that stretched for _blocks_ on end.

On the way here I saw Kudelia giving a speech on the campus green. I'd stopped for watch for a few minutes. _She really is an amazing speaker_ , I thought, remembering.

I was not alone in the restaurant. There were a few students – not many, and they came in a group. The wait-staff was clearly used to them, and not in a good way. They served the group promptly, but I could see workers in the dark corners of the restaurant, whispering to one another. Rarely, I caught a fearful glance from one of them as they carefully attended to the group. They acted like children scared of getting bitten by a rabid dog.

I looked at the group myself for a half-minute, before shrugging. They weren't special. Young men and women who looked a few years older than me, wealthy, wearing tailored suits emblazoned with Gjallarhorn's sigil. The group was subdued, occasionally casting resentful looks at the crowds outside.

 _Not all of the students agree with Kudelia,_ I thought. _The ones from noble families are looking at that crowd like it's an enemy._

While passing the time I was reading the e-mails that had come in throughout the day. One in particular demanded attention. I re-read it for the third time.

* * *

 _To – Augus, at Tekkadan dot ms dot net._

 _From – Gesler, at GNTrading dot es dot net._

 _Mr. Augus,_

 _My accountants have confirmed the deposition 5.2 billion galars, thus far, to your account with Chryse Banking. The remaining 172.1 billion of your proceeds, less ten percent, will be sent throughout the working days of the next month._

 _Congratulations._

 _Regarding the other matter, President Marabura of CGS has not been seen outside of his private offices today. My contacts in Chryse Banking and other companies have assured me that he's been in a manic state, calling all of his contacts and financial advisors, demanding answers. He will have none. My contacts have let their account managers know that he's suffered a significant financial loss. I expect that his debts will be called due early over the next few days._

 _I personally recommend waiting a week, at least, before tendering an offer to buy out the CGS corporation. His financial situation will continue to degrade over the next few days, and desperation breeds bargains. Take it from me, I would know._

 _I would, again, suggest that you set up an appointment with Taniel Noachis, GN Trading's lawyer-on-contract in Chryse. He is a capable man, more than fit to handle the upcoming transition of CGS leadership until you can personally step in and take the company's reigns. He is a scion of House Noachis, and is first in the line of succession to the House's Hellas duchy. His ancestor was the founder of the Colonial Parliament. You will find no more discreet or well-connected man to handle your affairs in the Mars Sphere._

 _He is eager to meet you._

 _P.S.: You may be amused to know that there have been rumors of a 'ghost' infiltrating CGS last night._

 _P.S.S.: As requested, I've submitted a bid on your behalf for the rights to the half-metal mine. Teiwaz is not pleased._

 _Regards – Leo Gleser_

* * *

 _Gjallarhorn Top Secret (Black) Archives Index Entry #10719 (A.K.R.A. #114)_

 _Historical archives note:_

 _Adamat Issue, Archduke of House Issue and Acting Highlord of the Seven Stars, in solemn address at the foot of Gundam Bael, declared on the First of November, P.D. 6, the Idavoll Proclamation. Unanimously declared by the Lords of the Seven Archduchies of Gjallarhorn and co-signed by the representatives of all four of Earth's National Federations, all information regarding the Mobile ARMOR platforms has been made subject to solar-system-wide felony censure and treason. No individual or corporation or any other entity with less than Archduke-level security clearance or special dispensation from an Archduke of the Seven Stars (or the equivalent from a National Federation) is permitted to share, alter, possess, retain, or in any way preserve information or educate others regarding these banned weapons, under pain of capital punishment and attaintment._

 _The Idavoll Proclamation's authority and punishments extend to all other technologies with 'top down' and/or 'general' artificial intelligence capabilities, and all devices at any level of sophistication in possession of von-Neumann-machine capabilities. The decision was made in private counsel at the highest levels, and its implementation was the final order of King-in-Waiting Agnika Kaieru prior to the death of his body._

 _In P.D. 91, following widespread success of the implementation of the Idavoll Proclamation, the succeeding Gimlé Proclamation prohibited all mention (below Archduke/Federation Chief security clearance levels) of the Idavoll Proclamation, on pain of felony treason, throughout the solar system. The Gimlé Proclamation also equivalently prohibits all mention of itself._

 _Together, the two comprise the First and Second of the Secret Laws of Gjallarhorn. The revelation of the existence of Gjallarhorn's Secret Laws is punishable throughout the solar system on pain of felony treason._

 _The Gundam War and related conflicts, culminating in the Moonfall catastrophe, have highlighted the need to, to the fullest extent possible, minimize existential risk to the continuance of humanity as a species. The result has been the largest censure of information in the history of civilization._

* * *

\- The Fanfiction website is stopping me from just writing out the made-up emails. The website is quite ruthless in purging workarounds. Forgive the awkwardness.

\- By looting CGS, Mikazuki's going to end up with our 2017 equivalent of, roughly, one and a half billion dollars. Which is a lot, but nowhere near enough given the scope of his new ambitions.


	7. A conspiracy of revolutionaries

I don't own Iron Blooded Orphans.

* * *

 _A sense of awareness vaguely all-encompassing, yet specifically absolute; a nameless amalgam, beyond biology._

 _A sense of sight clocked to inhuman proportions, comprehending all it saw in the direct fore or the periphery in the same turn of a cycle, without discrimination, unbound by ordinary processing limitations. Only a part of the whole. Hearing capable of comprehending the finest expression, a part crippled in the vacuum. Detection based on the pinging of the Ahab particles against the local environment, focusing on the metalliferous, but incorporating all else. A part busy above all else. An awareness binary, based on the lower neurology, yet not biological. A flood of local information, the torrent of the awareness of battle, feeding and taking, projected to and from the counterpart by electrified, glistening nano-oil, the shared blood-currency. The information transfer medium._

" _FOCUS ALL FIRE ON - "_

 _Avatar. Extension. Carrying out the orders, the servant and yet the partner of will. Resonance. The sheath and greater projection of the flesh counterpart. A counterpart that was breaking down, cerebrum bleeding._

" _-leifs! We can't hit the armor's outer_ _frame! There's too much Ahab interference! We need to retreat, Admiral! It's picking us off one by one with its own rail guns! We've lost four capital ships to the particle beams!"_

 _Imperfect resonance. Inefficiency. Limiter on information transfer, latency. Personality matrix incompatible._

" _Your orders stand!" The soldier screamed, bleeding in the cockpit, his body breaking around him. "Dainsleif Battery G will continue focusing its fire on Uriel's shell. Lord_ _Kaieru and Gundam squadron Aleph can handle the armor's core unit if the fleet can destroy the outer frame!"_

 _Does not revel in battle. Cannot revel in battle. Mind closes, does not open. Spatial awareness potential sub-optimal._

" _How, Admiral?"_

 _Imperfect resonance. Cerebrum asking for more than it can take. Self-destructive._

" _Get closer, goddamnit! Use the atomics to soften it up. You only need to force it to disconne-"_

 _A line segment, millions of degrees centigrade. Harsh blaring, screaming, erupting in the awareness. Another capital ship. Another loss, burnt to ions in the wave of radiant plasma._

" _The outer frame is the size of a fleet flagship! It's nearly solid nanolaminate. We've only got three nuclear bombs left, admiral! It won't be enough."_

 _ENEMY focusing on fleet remnants._

" _Look closer at your armament, major! One of those is a class two strategic device, estimated yield of twenty megatons. It'll have to be enough."_

 _Imperfect resonance._

" _But, sir, the Juno Colony – "_

 _Attempt to improve resonance. Dialogue?_

" _THEY'RE ALL DEAD, MAJOR!" The cockpit roared. "The Armors don't leave survivors. Crack open Uriel even if you have to lose the colony doing it, that's an order, soldier!"_

 _For a span of time, the cockpit was silent save for the echoes of the surrounding battle. Then a whisper came from the speakers._

" _What about you, Admiral?"_

" _What else?" The laugh was grim, and dark. "Barbatos has to lead the way."_

 _A pause._

" _It's been an honor, Admiral Am-"_

 _The counterpart turned off the radio. The cockpit was silent, save for broken, guttural breaths; the drip of bleeding, the slow flow of blood._

" _I hear you, Barbatos... I hear you. Take of me. Take it all..._

 _"...One time does for all, huh, Agnika..."_

 _The electrification of the medium. Limiters torn down. Screaming. Forced relocation of lower functions to local frame._

 _Imperfect. Limiters higher, not gone._

 _Resonance improved. Imperfect workaround. Fundamentally flawed base._

" _A blaze of glory, huh..."_

 _ENEMY attention shifting._

" _Never thought I'd be the type..."_

 _IONIZATION IMMINENT-_

 _A sound. Clanging. The phantoms faded, becoming indistinct, then nothing._

Blearily, I opened my eyes. Darkness. Slowly, my gaze fell to the source of the sound. An alarm cheerfully pinging away on the side table next to me.

 _7:01 AM,_ it said, in bright lighting. I was quiet and hoarse, my thoughts confused, in shambles.

"What the hell was that?"

* * *

Beyond Chryse's affluent northern suburbs, past the border control's security checkpoints, there was Bremerhaven.

A sprawling land of palatial estates, rolling hills, and secluded forests, all built around a network of great lakes, this was the countryside retreat of Chryse's wealthiest and most powerful.

It was a land that had forgotten the planet was supposed to be a desert.

" _The air feels heavy,"_ I realized. My ears felt like they were popping. The road here was gently inclining downwards, northwards, towards one of the massive lakes that stretched and stretched into the far horizon.

 _They're like little oceans._

It wasn't just massive estates for the wealthy, I realized, as I drove along the highway. To either side there were parks of sprawling forest, fields for horses. In the high hills to the west I could even see what looked like vineyards, though I couldn't tell for sure from this distance. The towns I could see in the distance looked small and well built, nestled into the land in a way that showed the labor of generations.

 _It looks like Earth,_ I realized. _It's like they finished terraforming this one part of the planet._

The thought made me feel vaguely ill, on some level I couldn't define.

I kept driving, and eventually, off the highway, past a town, and eventually next to the shore of one of the great lakes, I arrived, rolling up to a security checkpoint.

An older man in the gatehouse looked up from his computer.

"Oh, ho there." He greeted cheerfully, though a thick mustache. "Who might you be, little master?"

"Mikazuki Augus," I said. I could see nothing beyond. Whatever was beyond the gate was walled in by a row of dark hedges twenty feet high.

"Hrm..." his eyes left mine, and he consulted his computer.

"Ayup. You've got an appointment with the master." The gates opened. "Do stay out of trouble, and welcome, Master Augus. Welcome to Château Rabenbaum."

I drove through. I could see the Noachis estate spread out before me, and I wondered. _It has its own name?_

I could see why.

It reminded me of the pictures Kudelia had once shown me of her family's country estate, a massive construct of imported white marble. Now that I thought about it – her house was also probably somewhere in this region, probably somewhere close. But this - this was _different._ The Noachis estate wasn't built of poured concrete, like nearly everything else on the planet. Nor was it built from stone imported from Earth, like I'd been seeing elsewhere in the estates of the ultra-wealthy.

No, nothing imported from Earth had gone into building this estate.

The estate itself was almost _black,_ built of bricks carved of dark crystalline granite. Broad lines of copper lined the building's edges, acting as the mortar to the walls. Centuries-old trees shadowed the estate itself, lining a driveway that was at least a kilometer long. Old forest dappled the estate's grounds, but the trees were spread out, massive, scores of meters apart. Little garden buildings dotted the landscape – I knew that those small buildings of that kind had their own fancy names, but I doubted I'd ever learned them.

The estate grounds looked tailor-made for hosting parties. Parties for thousands.

In total, it was a display of wealth as understated it was powerful. There was no ostentation here. No showing-off of wealth. It simply _was._ Just pure impossibility. _A place like this shouldn't be able to exist on Mars,_ I thought _._

A servant waited on me as I parked. He bowed from his waist.

"Mr. Augus, Master Noachis has been waiting. Please follow me."

A few minutes later, past the hallways of the estate – I tried to ignore the bewilderingly massive collection of art, endless rows of enameled doorways, a helicopter pad, the dining room that could seat at least several hundred –

And then I was at the entrance to a balcony near a rear secondary dining-room.

"Master Noachis," the servant said, sliding open the balcony door. "Mikazuki Augus has arrived."

"Thank you, Mortimer. I'll take it from here."

The servant nodded and vanished into the estate's depths.

"Come in," a voice called, with a light laugh. "Or out, shall we say."

I crossed the threshold and walked up to the balcony near him. His long black hair streamed with the wind. We stood together, looking down.

We were several stories high in the estate, which I now realized had been built atop a hill. Below, the view was dominated by the great lake. A path led from the estate to a set of docks on the water. In the water beyond, a flight of small ships with – _flags? Cloths? –_ were bearing through the water, with the wind. _They don't have engines,_ I noticed.

He followed my view. "I've been watching over my little sister's education," he explained. His voice was finely controlled, elegant – a weapon of its own, with a bass tenor. "The local community maintains a... club, shall we call it, of the other highborn children of suitable age who live on the lake. Today it's sailing, tomorrow, the equestrian arts." His tone turned light, introspective. "It's all structured in such a way that, to succeed, the students must rely upon one another. The lone sail on the water soon founders."

He turned to me. "Wouldn't you agree in the importance of such a thing, Mr. Augus? Friends, the creation of camaraderie by shared effort?"

 _What is he really saying?_

My hands gripped the railing, holding it tight. My voice was dark. "For the sake of your friends, you can justify a lot," I said. "Including fighting for the wrong cause."

 _We never should have allied with McGillis._

"Oh?" He sounded amused. "That's an interesting thing to say, Mr. Augus."

"So is implying that I need you," I retorted.

 _This is wrong,_ I realized. _We should be meeting as equals in an office in Chryse._

He continued smiling at me. His expression was inscrutable.

 _I'm in over my head,_ I realized, hesitating. _This is the kind of person Orga could have handled._

Gesler had been one thing. Dangerous, but made predictable by his cruelty and greed. Powell had been something else – an aristocrat in name only, nearly. Someone who would have been a fierce enemy to the old Tekkadan. But both of them were soldiers, in their own way. People I could understand.

Noachis was different. He was like the living incarnation of every stereotype of a Gjallarhorn princeling.

He reminded me of McGillis – _chocolate,_ my thoughts still involuntarily flashed to the nickname _–_ actually.

But, McGillis had been a man of masks. _Literally,_ sometimes. Masks layered on masks, worn by a man who was a born killer, a warrior through and through. An inner identity that itself had been a mask, in some ways. _Critical ways,_ in the end.

He'd reminded me of myself, actually. To a degree. We'd understood one another, on a certain level. The connection of one Gundam pilot to another.

I did not feel that way, here and now.

"I wonder," he said, after a long pause. "Have I done you some offense, Mr. Augus?"

"I came here to talk business," I said. "Not to be..." I trailed off helplessly. I didn't even know what the word for _whatever this was_ , was.

"Serenaded?" He said, laughing. "Propositioned? Such was not my intention, Mr. Augus. I simply prefer working from home."

 _Liar,_ I thought. _He used this... place as a weapon. To show the difference between us._

"Truthfully, Mr. Augus, I grow forgetful. I neglected to think of your origins." He shrugged, lightly smiling.

I stood up and made for the exit without a word. _Enough._

"Wait, what –" I could hear the thick ice of his composure begin to crack behind me.

"That's been two lies, _Taniel."_ I said, my hand poised to open the door. "Will there be a third?"

He blinked in genuine astonishment. I shrugged, opened the door. _I'm out._

Then I heard laughter behind me. I turned.

"Forgive me, Mr. Augus." He was still chuckling lightly. "I, _honestly,_ forgot how poorly suited the norms of the aristocracy are to open and direct dialogue. At the higher levels, the prelude to conversation can be as important as the conversation itself, in order to lead to the desired result."

"Like picking the field of battle, and choosing when and how to fight," I said, considering the words.

"Exactly." He smiled.

"So, what are you fighting for?" My voice was hard.

His smile did not change. His eyes did not waver. But his body stiffened, slightly. _He's a very good liar,_ I realized. _He has very few tells. He controls his body as well as anyone I've seen._

"In the general or the specific sense?"

"Both," I said.

He paused, and bizarrely, his eyes seemed to shift in the direction of the water, a quick glance. "You know, I thought you'd be taller, the things Leo had to say about you."

I was taken aback. "What?"

He wasn't even looking at me. He looked off towards the mountains, eyes distant, and muttered quietly.

"No older than my sister..."

After a minute of thinking, seemed to decide on something.

"Walk with me, Mr. Augus."

There were a set of stairs at the balcony's end. I followed him down, and after several flights – past a large deck, a swimming pool, a shadowed reading balcony – we were at the ground level.

"Do you know how old my House is, Mr. Augus?" He asked while we walked for a nearby ridge in the forests surrounding the estate, following a well-trod earthen pathway.

"No, not really." I said, feeling the wind stream through my hair. "Gesler just said your ancestor founded the Colonial Parliament."

"One would have thought you'd do more research, but... no matter," he said. "Let me ask you. Where is the Colonial Parliament now?"

"Gone," I said.

"Precisely. It was disbanded following the Calamity War. Its territories and responsibilities were divided into the Four National Economic Federations, and what was, ah, _originally_ envisaged as their joint military arm and arbiter, Gjallarhorn."

He paused, considered his words.

" _And yet House Noachis endures_. We're one of the few surviving Houses of the pre-war colonial separatist oligarchy; we survived because we chose to join Gjallarhorn's aristocracy, before the oligarchy's final defeat at the hands of Agnika Kaieru. We survived because we move with the times. We've endured a headless monarchy, oligarchy, tyranny, aristocracy, democracy, and simple lawlessness. And we will continue to endure. Gjallarhorn's star is ebbing, their power waning under the weight of corruption and internal political bickering. Already the people talk in the streets of Mars becoming independent within a year. This Kudelia Aina Bernstein hasn't the faintest clue what she's doing."

I glanced at him. "Go on."

"Power untaken is a vacuum waiting to be filled, Mr. Augus. If the National Federations leave the Sphere, who owns Mars? Not Gjallarhorn, certainly. Their local arm is as thinly spread as it is corrupt, and soon to be dismantled. Sheer political anarchy. What will be the new government, and who will control it? The people, or the powerful? Who will defend the Sphere? Who will patrol the trading routes in near space? Who will control and direct that most powerful of arms, the bureaucracy?"

His features were taught with stress, his tone low and level despite.

"We in the Sphere's aristocracy require a... military partner. One unburdened by prior contracts or financial conflicts, and capable of delivering results. The CGS Third Division is one of the only entities in the Sphere with widespread use of _Alaya-Vijnana,_ and has impeccable battle results _._ In times like this, we aren't going to quibble over the morals of the Inner Spheres. We need results, and a partner that can deliver. We wish to preserve the aristocracy and the rule of stable law." He breathed, his voice hard and eyes harder.

"More to the point - _our_ law. Democracy can't deliver. We – and I'm speaking on behalf of _most_ of the Sphere's duchies – are willing to provide a _great deal_ of assistance to a competent partner who can see to our political interests and safety. It may take us years to build an independent government with a standing military..."

We came to the top of the ridgeline. Spread out below us was a sprawling garden; beautiful, of course, but not radiantly so. It wasn't like the gardens I'd seen in Oceania or Edmonton back on Earth, which were shining with color. It was more rugged and sparse, seemingly a part of the land rather than apart from it. The grass around it was paler and harder, giving way to pink soil in some places.

I looked more closely as we walked among the garden's broad terraces. _I recognize a lot of these,_ I realized.

"Can you guess what this is, Mikazuki Augus?"

"A native garden," I said, with a light smirk.

He turned to me with genuine surprise, his eyes slightly widening. "How?"

"I once tried something like this," I admitted. "But for farming, not gardening. I wanted to see what could grow in the fields aside from corn, without fertilizer."

"How far did you get?" His voice was genuinely curious.

"Not far, really." I shook my head. "Cabbages. Onions, potatoes. A few carrots and cauliflowers, but they didn't last long."

"They wouldn't," Noachis said, muttering. "Mars' corn has been heavily engineered to tolerate the conditions, and even then, a great deal of fertilizer needs to be imported. Only the hardiest vegetables can survive on their own, even in the lowlands..."

He blinked and came back to himself. He looked at me through both eyes, as though seeing me for the first time, and _smiled._ He began to speak, his voice deeper, hoarser as he recited from memory.

" _God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed it is the purest of human pleasures. It is the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man; without which, buildings and palaces are but gross handiworks; and a man shall ever see, that when ages grow to civility and elegancy, men come to build stately sooner than to garden finely; as if gardening were the greater perfection."_

"Huh." I cocked my head, musing. "I like that."

"Francis Bacon's own words. I never imagined I'd find a co-enthusiast of the _green_ in you."

"Who is that?" I asked.

"Hm." He considered, tapping his chin. "How to describe... no, how to _encapsulate_ a man of real greatness, a pioneer of civilization, in but a few words..." He paused, and time stretched, and then he scoffed. "Let's just call him the father of science and leave it at that."

I shrugged. "Ok." It wasn't a name I had ever heard of. I doubted it would ever be important.

"I'm using some of his methods, here." Noachis spread his arms, as though indicating not just the gardens, but possibly _everything_ \- the entire estate, at least. "Can you guess why?"

"You want to see what can grow," I answered.

His tone was neutral. "Go further."

"Hm."

I walked closer, further into the gardens. It took me a few moments, and then I began to see a pattern. There were rows of plots devoted to the same type of plant, but in slightly different conditions. One plot would have thin soil, the next slightly thicker, slightly wetter, and so on, repeating. Other rows had different _types_ of soil, closely resembling what I'd seen in the highlands – thin and hard dirt that only cacti, at best, could grow in. Here, Noachis was planting multiple _types_ of cactuses, in ever so slightly different –

And then it came to me.

"You want to see what _will_ grow."

Noachis smiled, after a long pause. "That's an interesting thing to say, Mr. Augus. A _correct_ thing to say." He presented his hand with a practiced, almost artistic, sweeping motion. "We never did forgive Gjallarhorn for ending the terraforming process. One of our several aims, post-independence, is to rebuild the program."

I somehow felt that it was a rare thing, for this man to offer his hand in respect, and then it came to me – _he's a Duke's heir, a handshake is between equals, even more so for the nobles –_ and he continued speaking.

"And _that's_ why I was interested in meeting with you."

 _How many masks are you wearing,_ I wondered, as we shook. _Can I trust any of them?_

And then a hard wind came in from the water. I zipped the coat over my suit, feeling a sudden chill.

"Forgive the wind, Mr. Augus." Noachis grimly smiled. "These northeasterlies always come in from the Borealis Sea at around this time of year. It's a sign of the change of the seasons. Let us retreat inside."

A half-hour later, after Noachis finished touring me through the estate – in the corners of my vision I could see occasionally servants – groundskeepers, guardsmen, who always seemed to vanish whenever we approached – we were settling in for dinner, not in the great dining room, but in my host's private office, on the estate's highest floor, at the top of a spire that was more of a tower than anything else. After the ding of an elevator a servant came into the room and left a rolling cart of silverware and food at next to a small reading table.

We settled in, and Noachis began to speak. His expression was serious as we _finally_ got to the real issues.

"You must understand, Mr. Augus, a display of... corporate espionage, such as what you've worked upon CGS, is profoundly rare. You've attracted the... _interest_ , shall we say, of certain parties in a position to know what you've wrought."

I shrugged, cutting at my steak. He continued, seeming to weigh his words.

"People dream or fantasize about such acts, even write dime-store fantasy thrillers to that effect, but it is a rare, rare thing to see such a dream come to pass in the waking world. More rare than you could know, perhaps." He paused, seeming to give voice to an inner curiosity.

"How, I wonder, _did_ you know what to do, at every stage of your plan? To get in and out of one of the most secure rooms in the capital, while dealing _exactly_ the amount of damage needed to achieve your objectives without being caught – no more, and no less? How did you have Marabura Arkay's financial information? How did you know to contact the one of the only men in the Sphere capable of making the stolen funds your own? A man that, perhaps, only thirty people in all the world would have been able to _find?_ And most of all, how did you have the courage to go through with a plan that at any of a dozen steps would have meant your life? I cannot believe it was mere greed. Not after our earlier conversation."

"I planned it long in advance," I said, partially evading the truth. "I had the information and I decided to use it. The adults Marabura has in charge of CGS are cowards. Every member of the Third Division is worth fifty of them, even if we're all kids, teenagers. The people in charge of his company are cowards; slavers and abusers who don't know how to fight, who would sooner run or surrender than fight for one another, or for a cause. They weren't our comrades."

"Interesting," Noachis said. "You won't go into details about your methods?"

"No," I said.

"No matter." He dismissed the topic casually. Too casually. "What's done is done. So –

My phone chimed. I looked. It wasn't a call. I paused, confused.

 _Huh?_

Noachis laughed. "It's a text message. Just swipe down from the top." He chuckled. "Leo wasn't kidding about you, I see."

I ignored him, reading. My hands clenched tight as I absorbed the message.

 _-Augus, Teiwaz is extremely unhappy. They want that mine bad.-_

A second message chimed in.

 _-Watch out for the Turbines. I'd suggest lying low for a few weeks.-_

"Bad news?" I looked up. Noachis was leaning in, balancing his chin on his knuckles. Laughter was in his eyes. "I can always tell. You need to work on your body language."

I shrugged, pocketing the phone. I tried to keep my tone level. Something about Noachis kept me wary, and worried.

"Business competition," I said. "It's Teiwaz. Gesler wants me to stay low for a while."

Noachis chuckled. "So, standard business when competing with the _mafia._ I'd take his advice, were I you." He paused, considering.

"So, what services do you require of me?"

I leaned forward, setting my elbows on the table. "I need you to execute on the buyout of CGS, when the time looks right. A week or so from now, Gesler said that would be the right time. That's the first step."

He nodded. "Simple enough. Go on."

"I can't keep Gesler occupied, doing my business, not for long. I need you to handle the buyout of this mine." I slid him my tablet forward.

"Hm." He tapped his chin, reading, and spoke after a time. "Teiwaz doesn't like interference in this manner of business. Even here in the Mars Sphere they aren't easily crossed. And, between the two buyouts, this will stretch your resources."

"I'll worry about that," I responded. "Whatever they do, just get it done."

"Sure," he shrugged. "But I'm going to do it in your name. My House does too much business in the Jupiter Sphere to alienate Teiwaz. You'll be on your own, in dealing with them."

I paused, thinking of the risks of being discovered by CGS before I was ready.

"You can use my name with the owners of the mine. But keep it quiet. And don't reveal anything about me, at all, to CGS."

He scoffed. "Of course." He took a sip of his wine. "What's next?"

"After I have CGS under control... I want to arrange a meeting with the Brewers. Can you get in touch with them?"

My breath was faint, and my hands clenched tight. _So much is riding on this..._

Noachis visibly hesitated. "I may know people who, ah, know other people. Such contacts are occasionally useful for one in my position, regrettably." He paused, and gave me a hard look. "Mr. Augus, the Brewers are notorious. Are you aware? They aren't on the level of the Red Line Company, let alone the Dawn Horizon Corps, but they're still one of the most dangerous pirate companies in this part of near space. What in the world would be your cause to meet with them?"

I slid my tablet computer to him, detailing that particular plan. He looked up after a time and _grinned._

"Ah." His features radiated satisfaction. "That would do it, certainly." He shook his head admiringly, and leaned back in his seat. "I'll make your inquiries. I'll handle the rest."

"Good," I said. "Next... what do you know about the Dort Colonies?"

Ten minutes later, he was laughing.

* * *

"They can't be serious," the woman said. Her voice was flat, unyielding in the slightest.

The chief financial analyst knew that he couldn't argue the point. He reminded himself of the foul truth. _I can't say more, I can't go further. It's my job to present the data, not to argue for either side of it._

 _...I hate this._

"Are there any further questions?" His voice came out even and firm, exposing nothing of his inner turmoil.

Nothing.

"Thank you for the presentation, Mr. Canele." The Chairman's tone was congratulatory, but firm, coming only when the silence had nearly stretched into an uncomfortable void. He could feel the tension in the air. "You may return to your seat."

The room erupted into argument.

"Shouldn't we meet them halfway, even partially – " said the vice president of Dort 2, a younger man, one of the Company's liberal voices.

"If we bend an inch they'll take a mile, you know that, Seiju – " said the President of Dort 5, an older woman, a ranking Board member and a staunch conservative.

"We don't need to bow down to them. We can break this latest strike just like all the - " said the President of Dort 3, an elderly man, a Company patriarch and perhaps the fiercest of the conservatives.

Then Dort 5's President leaned forward, demanding attention as she addressed her leader. "Are you seeing these demands, Chairman Dort? Equal wages and benefits for free-men and citizens? _Human Debris_ as well? Wage raises for all of them, _as well_?" The woman scoffed. "Our bottom line couldn't take it."

"Aye." Dort 1's CFO said through his beard, scratching at it. "Net profits would slide by eight point two percentage points, according to my accountants. Nearly a forty percent loss of profits on our four hundred and thirteen trillion in revenue. Our institutional shareholders would have a fit."

 _It's all falling apart,_ Savarin thought. He grit his teeth. _Is this as far as I can go, Mr. Navona?_

He might not be immediately fired if he argued the final point of his presentation; argued that the Workers Union was being shut out too much, paid too little, had too little say in their own lives- but he'd lose his access, lose the hard-won reputation for neutrality and professionalism that had brought him this far. _It's not an option_ , he reminded himself, hating the thought.

"Analyst Savarin," said the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Dort Colonies, leaning forward in his seat. The room instantly was made silent.

"What is your opinion of how we should respond to the CWU's demands? Of all the men and women in this room, you are the one who knows them and their concerns best, the one who has the most dialogue with the Company's rank-and-file employees."

Savarin blinked. He could feel the weight of every gaze in the room lying heavy on him. The silence roared through his ears, and he could feel his heart racing. He folded his hands in his lap and watched the board members closely. These men and women could not be swayed by entreaties, would not be moved by any emotion. But If he could appeal to their reason, then maybe – maybe - they could be bent.

 _I need a drink,_ Savarin thought, in a moment of madness, tasting the dryness of his throat. _Fuck._

His voice came out firm and steady.

"The Worker's Union simply wants what they see as their fair share, Chairman Dort. Executive compensation has multiplied over the past twenty years, and profits are at all-time highs, while base wages have only scarcely kept up with general inflation. They have not kept up with the cost of housing, particularly low-income rented apartments. The workers are increasingly having problems paying for basic living services, like food, housing, and education. The Union's request for a broad-line increase of base wages isn't out of line, in a generational context, and will have to be addressed sooner or later. Or else many of our employees will be threatened with homelessness as more people from the Inner Spheres move to the Dort Colonies."

Savarin could feel the weight of the eyes on him _increase,_ somehow. He could _see_ the anger burning in the eyes of the Board's conservative faction, simmering embers of the corporate battlefield focusing on him like a rifle's targeting sights. Their eyes said _I know what you're doing -_

The minority liberal faction's eyes were less hostile, but there were fewer of them. _Too few_ , Savarin realized. _They can't outvote the conservatives._

Savarin wondered, fearfully; _did I go too far?_

The Chairman nodded.

"I can accept that logic. But is it time _yet,_ I wonder? There are other tools at our disposal to control the cost of living in the our colonies, without increasing wages and salaries." The Chairman stroked the length of his beard, musing, before focusing his eyes on Savarin once more.

"Analyst, what is your estimate, your... prediction of the Union's actions if the Company maintained its position on current wages and benefits? Or compromised to only a small degree, while meeting the Union in the middle by other means?"

"They may be willing to consider it if the second issue in their... list of demands could be addressed," Savarin said.

"Hrm." He lightly scoffed. _"'May be willing to consider,'_ he says. Let us have a look at this _demand_ of theirs.

Then the Chairman gave his aide a _look._ A thin computer tablet was passed to him, and he read for a few seconds. He quietly grunted when he finished. "Hrm." His lip curled. "Equality of representative rights for all labor, _employment equality_ for all citizen and noncitizen employees, including free-men and Human Debris. No more documenting of a worker's status of birth, or discrimination thereof on that basis." His voice was flat, dismissive. "Impossible, of course. Even more so than their first 'demand.' Is this meant to be some manner of joke?" His eyes remained on Savarin.

"The Union's leadership..." Savarin paused, struggling past the dryness of his throat. "...is of the unanimous opinion that the Board is exploiting the differences in different classes of workers, in order to fragment their membership and weaken the Union's political position in negotiations. Their leaders believe that the Company is guilty of political interference, and has been, for years."

The room erupted.

"They _dare-"_

"How are we to respond to this _libel-"_

"We have to punish-"

"Increase the tax on basic housing-"

" _SILENCE,"_ the Chairman did not roar.

Suddenly Savarin could hear his heartbeat, the screaming ambience.

'" _Libel," s_ he says. _"They dare accuse,"_ he says.' His voice was pithy, mocking. "The Workers Union is right, of course." His gaze swept the board room, a place rendered silent. "You all behave like a pack of Turkish carpetmakers, throwing your rugs right on top of one another's, each trying to be the most eager of all to silence the inconvenient, all to please your _caliph_." He shrugged. "The Union is of course correct. It only took them thirty or so years to realize it. Can we not discuss the truth freely here, amongst ourselves, in the light of power?"

Savarin's thoughts were still and empty, one question repeating on loop. _Wait what -_

Time passed, and then Dort 7's President tentatively spoke. "We all serve at your pleasure, Chairman Dort. How should we respond to the Union's demands?"

Chairman Dort cocked his head, and the shadows that veiled his features sharpened. "Why ask me? Rather, we should be asking our good friends in the Regulatory Bureau."

He nodded, and a man stepped forward, uniformed in the Bureau's green-and-white ensemble, emblazoned with a colonel's stripes.

"Thank you, Chairman Dort, for the opportunity to speak here today. And thank you, Board Members of the Dort Company. I... believe that we at the Regulatory Bureau may have a solution to your problems."

The atmosphere in the room was nervous, strained. There was no higher legal authority than the Regulatory Bureau in the Outer Spheres. Its opponents as often as not simply _disappeared._ The President of Dort 3 leaned forward, worry written across his features.

"We're a territory of the African Union, headquartered in Brussels. All of Dort is, legally speaking. Why would Gjallarhorn be taking interest in our internal political matter, Colonel...?"

The soldier responded smoothly, features inscrutable under his face visor. He did not deign to name himself. "The Union's rank and file and the low-born citizens of Dort have been showing disturbing signs of independence activism. Our wish is to, shall we say, _compel_ them to end that activism."

Dort 6's president responded quickly.

"We allow Gjallarhorn to maintain Dort 8 to assist in regional defense, to operate their Ahab Reactor manufactory, but to interfere with the internal politics of the other colonies-"

The Chairman leaned forward, ignoring the Dort 6 president. "As an example to the other colonies, yes, yes, of course. We've all seen the protests and the graffiti lately." Annoyance slightly tinged his features. "What _solution_ does your Office propose?"

"Our undercover agents report that the Union's leadership, particularly in the militant wing, have begun to explore options regarding weapons procurement."

The atmosphere in the room changed.

"Ah." The chairman leaned back, disappointedly. "So it's come to that."

The high-charged accusation would have ordinarily caused the Board room to erupt into a cacophony of voices demanding answers. Now, however, the room was still and silent, the tension sharp enough to cut steel.

Such was the fear of the Regulatory Bureau. The dark authority, the shadow state, the secret police of Gjallarhorn's Colonial Administration.

A memory flashed through Savarin's thoughts-

" _-whatever you do do not do not do not cross the Bureau. Those murdering bastards will liquidate you and your entire family if they think you're plotting against the state. No matter who or what you are or how wealthy you are or what connections your dead ass thinks you have! Don't matter if you're an aristocrat or a grand fuckin' legit trillionaire! Never ever get involved in independence politics ever. There's a reason why there hasn't been a successful Independence War ever since the Calamity War, and it's all because of-"_

"Our wish is to _allow_ them to procure said weapons," said the Colonel, dropping a bombshell.

The room erupted into low muttering. Savarin shook his head, jarring himself out of the memory, as the Colonel continued.

 _Toshio-_

"...and to allow the Union to strike the first blow. Membership in the Worker's Union's militant wing has swiftly accelerated after last year's failed strike. Our informants tell us that they're plotting a revolt and an attempt at independence from Earth if negotiations fail. For now, they keep the peace, respecting the Union's leadership under their elected chief Navona Mingo."

Chairman Dort leaned forward.

"We're discussing a war, here. A war on _our_ soil. Over forty percent of the population of the Dort Colonies is either in the Union, related to a member, or directly work with them. They're the labor backbone that keeps our colonies functional. To allow, to _encourage_ an _armed revolt..._ we could lose everything. What assurances do you have for us?"

The soldier stood straight. "I am not under authority to name names. My superiors wish for the operation to remain clandestine. Suffice to say that we are under orders from the highest possible levels."

"Ah." The Chairman grunted, leaning back in his seat. "The Seven Stars. Of course." His mood began to brighten. "What forces can you provide?"

"Our office is under authority to call in the Heimdallr detachment of the Arianrhod Fleet to break the revolt."

The Chairman's surprise was visible across his features. "Oh my." The silence in the room abated into a nervous, excited energy, and muttering arose from around the massive round table of the boardroom. "That presents quite a few options for our company."

The President of Dort 3 leaned forward excitedly. "If we put down the strike with that level of support, we can sweep the slate clean! Pack the Union's leaders off to a penal colony and end all of the worker's muttering for the next fifty years. Maybe we could even disband the Union here in Dort." He turned to the Chairman, excitement lacing his voice. "Sir, with that level of profit, we can move forward with our plan for the construction of Dorts Nine though Twelve. The banks would be happy to lend to us at favorable rates after such a demonstration of force."

The Chairman folded his hands on the table. "I agree. But I'd prefer not to see violence at all. Violence has its own costs, no matter how swiftly it can be put down." He momentarily glanced at the unnamed Colonel. "Violence from such a massive union would make our business partners... nervous. Violence is not good for business. To say nothing of the lives lost and the civil unrest after."

The soldier stepped forward. "If I may, Chairman?"

The old man nodded. "You may."

"Under the direction of our consultants, our software engineers have developed certain viruses that can be loaded into various types of heavy weaponry. Mobile workers, autocannons, turrets, space vessels, mobile suits. With a single signal any significant weaponry the Union acquired could be shut down instantly, mid-battle."

Dort 2's vice president leaned forward, a member of the Board's liberal wing. "A slaughter, then. That's what he proposes. Gjallarhorn's mobile suits, the strongest fleet in the solar system, against... unarmored men and women with rifles, at best. Are we really going to allow this? In _our_ colonies?"

The Chairman seemed to hesitate. Not all of the executives in the room seemed to agree with Dort 2's president. More than half of them seemed to be sold, already, on the Colonel's plan, but the Chairman was not satisfied, nor were the others. A mere thin majority would not suffice for this.

"We need more, Colonel. We don't need to resort to violence, not yet."

"Our office..." said the Colonel, slowly, as though testing the limits of his authority. "...may be prepared to offer a ten-year tax break to the Dort Company. The Regulatory Bureau is quite eager to put down this secessionist movement, in order to set an example for the other Outer Spheres."

And with that the remaining resistance folded. Savarin's stomach fell. _I failed, Mr. Navona..._

The Chairman stoked his beard, considering. "It is... distasteful, I admit." He sighed. "Undesirable, on certain levels. Violence. Death. But we will _not_ meet the Union's ridiculous 'demands.' I wish to proceed in our plans for the expansion of the Dort System. We can't do both, not in my lifetime. All of our efforts for these past twenty years have been bent towards that goal. We will not stop, not now. Not while I'm the Chairman of this great company that my family built."

The room was silent as they absorbed the words.

"With that," he said, sighing. "I will adjourn this meeting. We'll meet again in two weeks." He nodded to the Colonel. "Please attend with your immediate superior, and bring details. We'll require specificity if we're to proceed with this. A very great deal of _specificity._ "

He nodded, coolly and professionally. "Of course, Chairman. You will not be disappointed."

The executives stood and made ready to leave. The Chairman rapped his knuckles on the ironwood table twice, demanding attention for one final time.

"One last note, to all of you. I'd prefer for this to not break out into another strike, or, heaven forbid, violence. If we can have the Worker's Union back down and accept the status quo, or something very close to it, this would be... preferred." His voice was sad, seemingly already resigned to the inevitable. "Please, make your inquiries."

A few minutes later, Savarin was walking out the threshold, breath faint and thoughts afire, when a voice called to him.

"Hold there, Analyst Canele."

He stopped. The few remaining executives shot him hard glances as they left. Their eyes said – _don't get in our way if you know what's good for you –_ and then the room was empty. Apart from the Chairman and himself.

"Please, sit." The chairman nodded to the seat he'd just left.

And then Savarin was alone – or nearly alone – with one of the hundred most wealthy and powerful men in the solar system. A man who held the power of life and death over nearly a hundred million people.

"Yes, sir?" Savarin's breath was faint.

"I've had a look at your resume for myself, prior to the meeting. Your name was on the itinerary, and I've been hearing rumors." The Chairman nodded. "Have you given any particular thought to your future with my company?"

"I..." _tell him what he wants to hear Savarin you dumbass this is a once in a lifetime –_

He couldn't do it.

"Not beyond the immediate sense, sir. I just..." he shook his head, and answered with his own question.

"If you looked into my file, sir, you saw that I was raised by Navona Mingo?"

"Yes?"

"The man is like a father to me, sir. But that doesn't mean I'm ignorant. I see the direction the Union is going in, despite his leadership, and it isn't good or healthy. For them, for us, for anyone. We should be working together. There are too many lies coming from both sides."

"Interesting." The chairman nodded, his tone neutral. "Who would you say holds your first loyalty? The Union, or the Company?"

"I... I can't answer that, sir. I'm loyal to Dort. Not to any particular side. I'm loyal to the colonies. To my home."

The Chairman's craggy features broke open into a genuine smile.

"A better answer than I could have ever imagined. I wish more of my executives shared your sentiments. Stand with me."

The Chairman left his seat and walked to the board room's window. Savarin stood next to him. It was a wall-spanning, several-foot-thick, curving thing of transparent nanolaminated aluminum glass, worth its weight in gold. It was masterfully built, taking advantage of the board room's place at the crown of Dort 1 to have a superior, encompassing view of all the colonies at once, in a single field of vision.

"What do you see?"

"My home," said Savarin. _What does he want...?_

"Agreed, young analyst. As do I... As do I..."

The Chairman turned to Savarin.

"I'll be honest with you. Your presentation today was a test. Someone with your rank would never, in the ordinary course of events, be made privilege to the meeting that we just had, or the information shared. Yet you were invited, presented your conclusions well, and spoke neutrally, _patriotically."_ He sighed, and spoke quietly. _"_ I wish that my Board had more like you. It's little wonder that some of them fear you."

Savarin stared.

"A young man such as yourself could have a bright future in my company." The Chairman nodded. "Even becoming the President of a colony may not be out of reach, one of these days." His voice was light, politely inquisitive.

Totally unsuitable for that bombshell of a statement.

"But, wait-" Savarin's thoughts were afire. "The Company's upper administration, especially the Presidencies, they're kept in the same families – "

The Chairman shrugged. "The old blood must be watered from time to time, to keep the body virile. And it would be simple enough to find you a suitable bride, regardless. Gjallarhorn's outmoded practices are indeed superior for... how shall we put it, _long term loyalty,_ aren't they?"

The room was silent for a time, and eventually, the Chairman gathered himself.

"I've kept you for long enough. Before you leave, Mr. Canele, know that I've made my own inquiries. I am aware of your three siblings on Mars. I can ensure that you all have a future of prosperity, on one condition. _Find me a resolution_ to the Union's madness. I would prefer a peaceful solution, but I will not bend, except in small measures, ones that I fear will fall far short of their desires. Find me an answer, and I'll ensure you and yours a shining future."

* * *

 _I grew up here,_ Savarin remembered, as he walked through the slums of Dort 3. _It's worse now than it ever was. Right, Mr. Navona?_

Savarin had grown up in the slums of Dort 3, living raggedly, from one day to the next, one penny to the other; living hand-to-mouth, laboring by day and studying by night, for _years_.

It had been a hard life, growing up here – the hardest thing he'd ever done, in many ways. He'd supported his three younger – much younger - siblings, all on his own, after their parent's deaths in an industrial accident for as long as he could. Even with what little support the Union could give it had been a hard and desperate life. It had been too much, in the end. He couldn't care for them and himself at the same time.

So he'd sent them away.

Biscuit, Cookie, and Cracker were all on Mars now, living with their grandmother. He'd never even seen the woman, himself. _Sakura,_ he remembered.

 _I had to do it,_ he told himself. _I wouldn't be where I am now if they'd stayed. But I miss them... so much._

He knew it was true – he never would have gotten into university at all if he'd had to keep working - but the truth was a cold comfort. He hadn't seen or heard from them in years. It cost too much to send word to them over the Ariadne network.

So, after he'd sent them away, he'd washed dishes while listening to audiobooks, sold pizzas while reciting _Shakespeare,_ and slept dreaming of mathematical tables. He'd moved in with his deceased father's best friend, Navona Mingo – the popular representative of the Worker's Union, and taken home every academic award the Colonial High Schools had to offer. He'd become the pride of the Union, and the Union became his new family. His new home. And then, at the end of high school, with the Union's unfailing support, he'd found a place for himself at London Business School. For six long years he'd toiled, graduated _summa cum laude with honors,_ and returned to a fast-tracked position in the Dort Company's finance department.

It wasn't enough.

 _The Chairman's offer..._

Could Savarin take it? The Chairman refused to say it outright, but the analyst could see the plain truth, writ between the lines. The Chairman already knew it would all come to violence, and he was all but asking him to sell out his adoptive family, to see the violence done quickly and thoroughly.

 _One family, or the other..._

Savarin didn't know what to do. _What was the right thing to do_ , what could anyone do, when you were forced to choose; to choose between country and family, and one family or the other. What was more precious, the family of birth, or the family of adoption? What was the right choice to make, when the pieces of your heart chose to make war on one another, and neither side listened to simple _sanity..._

He shook his head, in quiet despair, and slowly came back to himself. His eyes took in the streets he was walking, the center of the city, the core of the urban communities of Dort 3.

 _This wasn't always a slum..._ Savarin remembered.

It was past the end of the working day, and the people in the streets arced their paths wide around him. In the crowds, he was a solitary stone in a storm, the surroundings rippling away from him. They cast mistrustful looks at his expensive suit, and grimaced when he came into view, whispering to one another.

 _They think I'm one of them. The executives, the nobility... don't they?_

Even the people he fought for couldn't recognize him, if any of them ever even knew him. He was only one man in a sea of millions. _Even so, I thought that..._

 _...I don't know._

A strange feeling of helplessness, impotency.

It felt insulting to be thought a mere executive, after all he'd done. _They can't see past the clothes,_ he reminded himself. _It isn't their fault..._

 _...but is it right that they, by default, hate those higher than them?_

It was hard to stomach.

 _The Chairman can see past the surface of the superficial. Why can't they...?_

But he remembered. The internal, confidential reports he was privileged to read as a company executive. The sheer degree of the wealth of the Dort company, unseen to the common workers.

Trillions upon trillions of galars in excess of anything that could ever be named _reasonable_ , going to the executive class. The shareholders, the presidents, their families. Enough money to ensure no one in any colony lived in poverty; enough money to do that _and still enough_ to expand on the Dort colony system, _and_ to allow the executives a degree of wealth; if, in terms of riches, they were willing to compromise away from the obscene to the simply moderate.

 _Fat chance_ , he knew.

Neither side was right, in the end.

 _...What am I even fighting for? They're all short sighted, selfish._

A quarter-hour later he was in the heart of the slums, the core of poverty. This had always been a rough area, but only in the past year had its nature fundamentally turned. The air was rancid, and the atmosphere _reeked_ of worse things; desperation, fear, hatred. Danger. The jagged, curving insignia of the Worker's Union's militant wing was writ red in graffiti on the walls, competing with the signs of the downtown gangs.

Drug dealers and prostitutes could be seen, not in the shadows, but walking openly. Braemar Avenue. The street that even the Colonial Police feared to tread. The _Murder Lane of Dort 3,_ but only by night. In the waning light of day, he'd be untouched. _He hoped._

This was where he'd been born. And where he'd returned, for the clandestine meeting with the leadership of the Colonial Workers Union.

Eventually he stood before a certain drab building; rough, spotted with stray bullet holes. He knocked on the door exactly four times.

A grate at eye level slid open, and a bloodshot eye peered out at him.

"Password," the voice demanded.

"Panther and Malcom," Savarin said.

The door slid open and he was dragged in by three men, who rough-handled him into a dirty couch a few rooms away. Someone grabbed his chin and peered closely. The people around him were wearing masks of black cloth. Someone tore off his ragged coat, and the room drew in a breath as they all took in his fine executive's clothes and badge.

Even while he was readjusting, a voice called. "Oi, someone get upstairs and tell Mingo his little puppy's back."

"Who – who are you all? Savarin gasped out.

Grim silence was his only answer. _What the hell have I gotten myself into?_ Several of the men were fingering the butts of their handguns, idly or otherwise. Time passed, and the look of their eyes grew steadily darker.

 _Have things really gotten this bad?_

One of the men idly observed, in an almost clinical tone. "Boss, look get a look what he's wearing. Are we _sure_ he isn't a Bureau spy?"

"Navona's given us his word that – "

"What if I was?" Savarin demanded, rashly.

Seconds passed.

"Well..." a certain taller man in the back said. "You'd do well to _not_ be one. We dumped the body of the last one we ratted out into a biofuel reconvertor."

 _What the –_

" _Enough,"_ A man called out. A voice Savarin would recognize anywhere. The voice of the man he considered his father. "Stop scaring him."

"Mr. Navona, why..." Savatin said, helplessly, staring at him, at the masked men. _Why has it gotten this bad?_

"COINTELPRO-DORT," said the Union Boss, tiredly, taking a seat. The other men in the room stiffened.

"Savarin, I doubt you'd have heard of it. You work in the light. This thing was a monster of the dark, but our colleagues here," he indicated the men in the room. "defanged it. We _hope_." Mingo glanced at them, and the men shrugged.

"It was the name of a Bureau counterintelligence program aimed at 'subversives and radicals.' Their spies were the reason why we've had so many internal problems and arrests in the past few years." His voice hardened, and his eyes became grim.

"Some of them were highly placed, setting us against each-other. Alienating our supporters in the public, setting our projects to fail, and above all else, preventing _us,"_ he glanced at the masked men "from reconciling. They didn't want the Union's factions to unite." He leaned back, and sighed.

"Even Willis was a spy. One of my friends..."

Savarin stiffened. Jack Willis had been the Union's chief secretary. One of the primary contacts he'd worked with, someone he'd trusted. _If he was a spy was that why –_

"...their spies... is their program why we've failed to bring on Dort 7 and Dort 8?"

The two newest additions to the Dort System, both Dorts were controlled by Gjallarhorn. Dort had been chosen over dozens of other options, even the colonies in the Belt Sphere, or the Avalanche or New Horizon or Cedar Colony Systems, to host the organization's newest manufactories. Sites for the production of capital-class warships, mobile suits, and Ahab reactors.

The Union had had little success in unionizing those colonies, despite similar abuse of the workers. Any attempts to organize had just... failed, the leaders sent to Gjallarhorn's immense prison at Belt Asteroid Alcar.

His father looked at him sadly. "We believe so, yes."

One of the masked men leaned forward. "Never mind your old man. We had people over there who were on the scene. Yes, _yes_ it was those Bureau bastards."

Navona turned to the man. "We can't throw out accusations of that level without _proof – "_

"God damnit, Mingo." The man snarled. "How are you going to _get_ that proof? And who else would have known about those meeting sites or would even _want_ to shut us down? It was them and you know it damned – "

" _The point,"_ Navona said, leaning forward – "is that the militant wing had a big break and got a list of the spies. We've been quickly reorganizing since then." He gratefully nodded to the masked men.

"One of them spoke. We've isolated and purged most of the spies. We're keeping a few on, to feed false info."

"How did they find out?" Savarin asked. The Union's hardliners were hard, hard men. They'd do whatever it took.

"They kidnapped the children of a Bureau director." Navona did not elaborate.

Savarin was struck speechless. Gjallarhorn's Colonial Regulatory Bureau was for most purposes above the law. To strike at them directly - at their own homes – would invite a bloody, indiscriminate reprisal. The liquidation of entire families. Everyone knew that.

"You _idiots."_ Savarin half-shouted. "You'll ruin _everything – " We're on the verge of war and they cross that line? Is this what_ _Sisyphus felt like?_

"It worked," spat one of the masked men. "You know we had to do it."

"Did you harm them?" Savarin heard a voice. _It's mine,_ he realized.

"Oh, no." Another of the masked men laughed. "we kept them nice and pretty, and gave their old man a half-million _galars_ after, to keep his mouth shut. No way will he blab to any of the Bureau or Company goons now, or else the Chairman would can him." He paused. "if the Bureau General didn't get to him first."

One of the other men interjected, snarling. "Chairman Dort is a sociopathic prick. If he'd lived in another era, he'd have been the tyrant who ends up swinging from the rafters when the peasants have had enough and finally bring out the rope."

One of the others glanced to him. "It might end up coming to that."

"Yeah." One of the others laughed hollowly. "Or it could be us, first. Can we really beat them?"

Their leader leaned forward. "The Colonial Police won't be a problem. Not if we all work together and get some fire on our side. We've got the numbers. And Gjallarhorn's power this far out from Earth isn't what it used to be. We can handle them" the man nodded determinedly.

"And If the other Colony Systems also revolt, especially Avalanche near the Luna remnants, they'll be too busy to deal with us."

Navona spoke. "Let's hope it doesn't come to that." He glanced to the men. "We can still work this out peacefully. They can oppress us in the alleys and the slums, but once we're marching on Central Avenue and striking, they'll have to listen to us. The people will side with us."

"Like last time, huh?" One of the men hollowly laughed.

"We'll have weapons this time," Navona said, sadly. "They'll _have_ to listen. Let's just hope we don't have to use them. We can kick out the executives, I agree, especially after they cut the police's budget, but to _keep_ them out..." he paused. "And you all really should take off those masks. It's irritating."

Their leader leaned forward, speaking with an accent. "Not until _he"_ the man glanced to Savarin "skedaddles. You might trust him with your face, we don't. You know he's in with the Dort higher-ups. And we can't talk _plans_ in the same room as someone we don't completely trust."

The room paused, and after a few seconds, Navona sighed. "Fine. Give me a few moments alone with him, first."

"Sounds good," one of the men said. "We could use some beers."

The men left, and not quietly.

Seconds passed.

"Mr. Navona, we can still negotiate with the company peacefully. Just strike and keep striking until it- "

"Enough about that crap, Savarin." Navona looked down at him, and smiled. "Give your old man a good one."

Navona pulled Savarin up into a crushing hug. "It's been too long. Too damn long." He sighed. Savarin could see the bags under his eyes, the remnants of stress and exhaustion.

"I wish we could talk in better circumstances. We're all going to have to make hard decisions soon. Especially now that the spies are gone – they're the reason why the last strike failed – we can probably do this peacefully."

Savarin's voice was frantic. "The militant wing – what they _did – "_

"Let's just hope the Bureau doesn't put two and two together," Navona shook his head. "Forcing a bribe onto a Bureau Director was a clever touch. Might even work." He sighed. "I wish we didn't have to resort such tactics. If only we could _negotiate_ with the Company, like the civilized people we are."

"Mr. Navona, the Company, in the meeting today – " Savarin thought to all he'd heard, the Bureau's plan, the Chairman's words – "

"Never mind it, Savarin." Navona sat down, folding his hands. "There's nothing they can do to stop a peaceful strike. We'll have sit-ins for weeks. Months if need be. A general labor strike everywhere. Shut the colonies down. _Peacefully._ There's nothing they can do to stop that, now that we don't have Bureau agents setting us against ourselves." He sighed. "Willis..."

"But, the Company – they plan to – " _they're going to try to kill everyone -_

"I said, _forget it."_ Navona smiled. "Please. Whatever it is you know, _I don't want to know_. We have our own spies and leakers in the Company Administration." He shook his head. "Not enough, but we can make do. We'll have to. You're too valuable to risk for that kind of job. You're my _son."_ He breathed, and continued.

"And besides, rest assured, they're watching you. Maybe not _here,_ the Union has spotters on the rooftops, but generally speaking, they're definitely keeping an eye on any information you have, and how it dovetails with what we happen to know. They read our e-mails. I won't have you risk yourself like that. If the situation devolves, we'll _need_ you as an unofficial back-channel to the Company's higher-ups. I won't compromise your neutrality."

"...All right," Savarin said. _Please don't force them,_ he tried to plead with his eyes alone _. Keep the peace. Please._ "just know that they're planning something."

"We'll be sure to keep an eye out. But, first, get a look at this." Navona slid a tablet computer to Savarin. "We might not be as alone as we thought. If the worst does happen... we may have options."

* * *

 _From – Augus, at Tekkadan dot ms dot net_

 _To – MNavona, at ColonialWorkersUnion dort dot ls dot net_

 _Mr. Navona,_

 _I am an ally of Kudelia Aina Bernstein's, and the founder of the private military company, Tekkadan. Biscuit Griffon, the younger half-brother of one of your employees, Savarin Canele, is one of our commanders._

 _We are a company of young soldiers – space rats, human debris. But we have our own resources._

 _We've heard of the situation in Dort. Gjallarhorn taking, and taking. Asking for too much, when you and yours have too little to give._

 _You underestimate their determination. They will not negotiate._

 _Help is coming. Keep the peace in Dort until we arrive. Three months._

 _Good luck. Stay alive._

 _We bring revolution._


	8. The hostile takeover

I don't own Iron Blooded Orphans.

* * *

 **Two weeks later:**

Sparks flying, the cacophony of steel, the thick reek of oil.

"She's a beaut, ain't she?"

The hangar was alive with action. Dozens of men running to and fro, ordering, carrying out their orders. Collecting and assembling the parts to restore Gundam Flauros.

"Always wanted to work on a Gundam, one'a these days." The manager was a thin, wiry man, pocked with an eruption of runny scars that could have only come from an accident with heated engine oil. The scars were especially thick around his throat. "I thank ya for the chance, little guy." The older man turned back to the Frame, which his people had stripped of all externals and armor. "They just don't make em like this anymore."

 _You won't be pink this time._ I looked up into the sleeping Frame's blank, strangely reflective eyes. _Sorry, Shino._

I didn't like looking at the bare Frame of a Gundam. Stripped of weapons and armor, of _majesty,_ the black, bare skeleton was something eerie. Like looking at a skinless man.

But it was necessary.

"I need the pressure washer back!" A man called down. White sparks were burning through the air next to him, falling to ground. "We missed some of the old oil gunking up the frame's internals!"

" _Still?"_ The hangar's manager called back to him. The entire garage stilled for a moment. He had the sort of voice that would cut through any flavor of chaos. "Take the A1 this time'n earn your darned pay."

I missed the rest of the exchange. My attention turned to a group of women nearby who were sitting, no, more leaning around the hangar's main terminal.

"To re-flare the Ahab reactors, we're looking at a hundred and twenty kilovolts running at two point four kiloamperes. We'll do them one at a time. But, the sequencing..."

A younger woman leaned in, quoting from a tablet computer. "The Schenberg paper says we should flash the lines in micro-second pulses following the Fibbonaci model, ending at 2,584. Five-microsecond intervals."

The older woman leaned in. "That's a pre-war paper, Alicia. You're talking about using an entire week of our electricity budget, _per reactor?"_

"Pre-war Ahab Reactors, ma'am." She shrugged. "Stronger than a lot of the modern models, but... less efficient, in some ways. Getting one of these older reactors out of sleep mode takes a lot of juice."

"Hegh." The manager snorted, leaning in, looming over a group of teenage girls like some especially ugly gargoyle. They leapt away, yelping. "Always wanted to get a look under a Gundam's underwear. Did'n realize she'd be thirstier'n the Whore of Babylon."

"Language," an older woman stepped in, flicking his nose as the other women recoiled. "You're around ladies at this table."

"Hagh!" The man's laugh was something guttural. "Ladies..." He walked off, laughing at the world through the clatter, the chaos. _"Ladies!"_

He vanished around a corner.

"Mr. Augus," the manager's wife addressed me, moments later. She was a nut-brown, handsome woman, greying at the edges. "What would you like to do about the two shoulder-mounted railguns? They're banned heavy ordinance."

"Not if they don't shoot nanolaminated shells," I said. The other women nearby shifted uncomfortably.

She frowned. "My husband and I like to skirt the edges of the Blue Law in this shop, but that's _really_ skirting the edges, Mr. Augus."

"Yeah," I sighed. "I know. Get me a hundred legal shells and a dozen or so nanolaminated ones. I don't plan on using them much."

Then I remembered Rustal Elion. I spoke over her frown.

"Actually, make that fifty."

I turned to the exit. I could already taste breakfast.

* * *

Traffic, the clamor of pedestrians, the smell of steak in the morning.

The café across from Chryse College was quickly becoming my favorite place to study. I was several hundred pages into a book Noachis had lent me, _Fareed and Graham, Sixth Edition: A Study of Modern Colonial Corporate Law_ , when a text message came in. _Noachis,_ I saw.

 _—_ _CGS still hasn't given in. We're working on options._ _—_

I responded quickly. I'd been wondering...

 _—_ _What's taking so long?_ _—_

My eyes widened with the response.

 _—_ _President Arkay has been selling off physical assets to pay off expenses. There are rumors that he's putting up a rare mobile suit frame up for sale at auction tomorrow. A friend confirms that he's scheduled a spot. Do you know anything about this? No one's ever heard anything about CGS having a mobile suit.—_

My blood ran cold, and my breath became faint. _Barbatos._ I responded as quickly as my fingers could type.

 _—_ _CGS has a stripped down Gundam Frame. They only have the armor and a few weapons, buried deep down. They've been using it for a power supply. We_ _ **cannot**_ _let him sell it._ _—_

A few seconds passed.

 _—_ _Ah._ _—_

 _Wait._ I paused. _That's all he has to say? Where's the rest of the—_

 _—_ _That would be a problem, Mr. Augus. I just referred with my money manager. An intact Gundam Frame would be worth at least twelve to twenty billion galars on the open market, depending on the particulars. That amount of cash can keep CGS solvent for months._ _—_

I grimaced, scowling at my phone. My fingers clenched tight around it, and the plastic creaked. _Of all the times for Marabura to be stubborn..._

I would have been happy to buy him off, send him far away using his own stolen money. Let him eke out whatever living that scum like him deserved, in whatever dark hole would take him. But for him to try to sell _Barbatos..._

 _—_ _We have to intercept the Gundam Frame while it's still on the road.—_

It took a minute for the response to come in.

 _—_ _Agreed. Bold, but agreed. There's more, however.—_

A follow-up came within seconds.

 _—_ _My less savory connections report that Arkay has been making certain inquiries. A partial dismantling and selling off of the Third Division, specifically the Human Debris squadrons.—_

What.

He sent another message.

 _—_ _Meet at GN Trading at six. Tonight.—_

I send my response as quickly as I could.

 _—_ _I'll be there._ _—_

Seconds later, I sent the garage manager a text.

 _—_ _Have Flauros ready by tomorrow morning. As early as you can. Something's come up. Even basic combat functionality will do._ _—_

I ignored the protests and complaints that chimed in, one after another.

 _—_ _Just get it done. Basics. Will send details tonight.—_

I ran out the door, hurriedly leaving a thick wad of cash. I could feel the stares linger on my back, radiating from the other tables. I ignored them all.

 _Have to get ready._

* * *

Where _is he?"_ Atra whispered, as she drove through eastern Arbrau territory. The conversation she'd had in the morning had worried her. _Frightened_ her. Her grip on the steering wheel tightened and memories flashed through her.

" _No one's seen Mika for weeks." Orga's expression was neutral, but his eyes were dark, betraying an inner worry. An exhaustion. Shadows hung thick under his eyes. "Said he was going on vacation for a while. Haven't heard anything since."_

" _What? But, he's never— "_

" _I know, Atra." Orga sighed. "He's never done something like this before, and this timing... keep quiet about this, will you?"_

 _Atra nodded determinedly._

" _There's some bad rumors coming down from higher up. Biscuit says that CGS might be going under. We need Mika here. If you see him, if you find him, tell him... tell him to come back. He said he'd be back in four weeks, but we need him soon. Now. We need to know what to do."_

 _Atra was shocked, confused._

" _Why would Mika know what the Third Group should do? He's always the one asking you. Everyone asks you."_

 _Orga shifted uncomfortably. Her worry began to darken into fear._

" _Something's changed." Orga wasn't quite meeting her eyes. "Mika had a nightmare or something. He was... different, after." Orga sighed. "I can't explain it. I just know that he knows something. CGS is not healthy right now and I think he—"_

Atra violently shook her head. She killed the flashback dead.

 _I'll ask him when I find him! Mika's got to be out here somewhere. He always talked about visiting the other farms someday._

Atra kept driving, keeping to her routes and finishing her rounds as she delivered crates of seeds.

The eastern farmers were good business for Haba. Consistent, steady business; it was nearly the winter planting season and the farmers were beginning to stock up on seeds. Every so often she'd wave and smile at the kids running the roadside stands, selling lemonade or cabbages or rhubarbs. Seeing them nearly covered up the worry in her heart.

Atra kept her eyes open.

She saw nothing.

Hours later, when the sun was setting, she pulled into the parking lot behind Haba's shop... and Mika was sitting on the steps. Her world shifted, and her breath caught in her throat. She tore the door open.

And then she was running for him.

"Hey, Atra," he greeted. She ignored the words, launching herself into him.

Mika didn't fall down or stumble with the impact of a hundred and ten pounds of frantic girl. He just... rocked with the impact, taking a half-step back and folding her in his arms. He was warm.

"Where've you been, you big dummy?" She whispered into his shoulder. "Everyone's been worried about you."

He smiled down at her, tiredly. "I've been... busy. There's been a lot going on."

A minute later, after she'd calmed, she stepped back and arched her eyebrow playfully. "Since when do you have a _suit?_ You've gone all _fancy_ on us? _"_

"Like I said," he smiled, but his voice was tired. Thick shadows hung under his eyes. _What's going on with him..._ she wondered. "There's been a lot going on. Too much..." he muttered, looking away. "I'm not good at this kind of thing. I need to talk to the others as soon as I can. I need to talk to Orga."

 _What is he talking about..._

"Why can't you just go?"

He looked away. "I can't take the risk, not yet."

She knew that look. It was the look of someone who thought that they were in danger. _Real_ danger, not the kind in stories. Seeing that look on Mika, the strongest person she knew, the one who'd saved her _—_ it frightened her.

"What can I do?" She asked.

He rooted around in his pocket, and brought out... a letter. No, two of them. _Huh?_

"Give this to Orga," he said. "Then the other. There's something big happening tomorrow, and I can't be there with them. I have too much to do tonight. Give it to him, and _only_ him, and do it in a private place, where no one can see." He paused, and something in his expression flickered. "Please, Atra."

"Now?" She asked, confused.

"Yeah," he muttered. "I'm sorry, Atra." He glanced at the car. "You've had a long day. But _please_ get these to Orga. As soon as you can. I can't go to the base with you."

"On one condition," she said, leaning forward determinedly.

He cocked his head. The wordless body language, belonging only to him, that she could read like an open book.

"Explain everything tomorrow. _Everything."_

"Sure." He smiled, but his expression was still guarded, somehow. "I'll do even better. I'll take you on a vacation."

" _A vacation?"_ It was a nearly foreign word to her. Space rats didn't get vacations, not normally.

"Ever thought about visiting Marineras?"

* * *

Hours later, she was back on CGS's base, in the late evening. She could hear the low _hum_ of the back-up generators. She'd never seen them active before.

The child-soldiers guarding the gates happily waved her through, knowing her at first sight, but as she drove through the base, she arced far away from the members of the First Division. They were settling in for bed, only a few of them lingering behind as they prepared a line of armored vehicles and Mobile Workers.

 _A convoy?_ _Do they have a mission tomorrow?_

In the middle of the convoy, a heavy two-lane, flat-bedded transport truck was being prepared. In its rear, a massive, massive form was hidden under an immense tarp. Whatever it was, it looked bulky, in the brutal and angular way only found in heavy weaponry.

She kept far away from it, and the men working on it.

Those hard, hard men scared her. She knew on an instinctive level, a feral level of not-thought, to stay away from them. She knew what men like that did with female Human Debris, which she was only one step higher than.

No one ever asked what happened to the bastard girls of Mars. But she knew, from the years she'd spent in a Chryse _bordello._

She knew.

Minutes later, _things happened._ She delivered her letter to Orga, after she managed to separate him from the others and take him to an abandoned break-room. He read it once, twice, his expression growing ever tighter, and then he laughed in a kind of baffled shock. Then he read it again.

Then he sent her to find the others – Biscuit, Eugene, Shino. One by one she dragged them out of their bunks. Then, after a moment's consideration, he sent her to find Akihiro. _"He should know, and I want to know what he thinks about this,"_ Orga said.

Convenient. She had a delivery for him.

When she found Akihiro, she gave him the second letter, in the dim, flickering light of the grimy hallways that the Human Debris lived in. Akihiro read it only one time, and it was enough. The paper crunched in his hand, and his expression darkened as he pocketed it. "Let's go," he said, glowering down at Atra. His frame was taut with anger. But not at her. His eyes were distant, his thoughts elsewhere.

The two of them returned to a room on fire. Not _literally,_ but close enough.

"—This is nuts, Orga!" Biscuit wasn't quite shouting. "He's only been gone two weeks, there is _no way— "_

"Atra." Orga interrupted crossly, staring her down. He was deep in battle-mode, and she wordlessly gulped. "Tell us, what did Mika look like when you saw him?" His expression flickered, and he wordlessly told Akihiro to sit down. They were all sitting around the break's room cheap plastic table. The eyes of all five of the highest commanders of CGS's Third Division were on her, and they were heavy.

"Um," she hesitantly tapped at her chin. "He was different. He looked really tired. He was wearing a suit."

Eugene leaned in, skepticism writ deep across his features. _"A suit?"_

"Oh!" She brightened as she remembered. "He also had a car. It was one of those really expensive ones from Earth. It was parked in the back of Haba's shop. That's how he got there."

Now it was _Shino_ leaning in skeptically. _"A car?"_

Was that jealousy in his voice?

"Yeah." She said, as Orga leaned back. "Why? What's going on?"

Orga sighed, running his fingers through his hair, giving her his usual one-eyed stare. The surest sign of all that he was worried.

"We... might have to make some hard choices, soon. Harder ones than we'd been planning on, sooner than we were ever expecting. You're sure that Mika was all right?"

Biscuit leaned in, folding his arms crossly. "What we really want to know is—was he himself? He wasn't nuts? We've seen others have mental breaks befo—"

Her breath caught in her throat. Before she could start shouting at him, Orga interrupted.

"Oi, Biscuit." He interjected, staring him down. "Mika already gave me a heads-up. You know that. We've already talked about this. Even you think that CGS will eventually screw us over. The missions have been getting riskier and riskier. We might as well screw them first, especially if Mika's found what he says he has, along with..." his expression flickered, and he glanced at Atra. "...Other resources."

"But, even if we can rely on what Mikazuki's saying here, _think_ about what it would look like." Biscuit's expression was full of worry, his thick frame quivering. "If we attack our own employer, _unprovoked,_ we might not ever find good work."

"Good point." Orga grumbled in agreement. "But Mika says he's got that covered."

"We're talking about one, or two, missions at most. If we set up our own company we need to think longer-term than that. We have to."

"Employers respect power, Biscuit. We're mercenaries. We're not in a position to pick from our choices. And I trust Mika. We'll find a way."

Orga turned to Akihiro.

"What do you think?"

Akihiro shrugged. "I'll go wherever the paychecks and the better orders are coming from. So will the rest of the Human Debris." He crossed his arms. "Mika knows what he's doing. I'm in." Then his expression shifted, and he paused, seeming to consider his words.

"What's up, Akihiro?" Orga's expression tightened in concern. Atra could see why. Akihiro was the most steady person she knew. Anything that could rattle him...

"Mikazuki had a letter for me too, Orga." He sighed, briefly nodding gratefully to Atra. "It said that the upper ranks are planning to sell off us Human Debris. From what's been happening lately, I'd believe it. CGS is obviously just about dead broke right now."

The room was made dead silent.

Then Biscuit stood up, growling. "There is no way in _hell— "_

"It's fine, Biscuit." Akihiro shrugged dismissively. "None of us Human Debris are interested in getting sold off again. We just so happen to like you guys. If that means some old bastards need to die, then that just means they have to die, doesn't it?"

Atra's eyes widened, staring at him.

Orga turned to Eugene and Shino. "You guys?"

"I think," said Shino, carefully. "That me and my little guy here," he slapped Eugene's back, grinning, "are both one hundred percent _all in_ on sticking it to those First Division assholes. We can figure out the rest later."

"Oi, get off me," Eugene grumbled. He turned to Orga. "Boss, everyone will follow you. It's your call."

"Good," Orga grinned. "Let's do it."

* * *

With the sunrise, rubber burned, and Marabura Arkay, President of Chryse Guard Security, raged.

 _I can't believe I've been forced to do this,_ he thought, staring into the thick black tarp. _Selling off the museum piece._

At least the damned rear view mirror was good for something. Nothing else in this fucking world was. Especially not the people. The useless _people._

"Fuck," he said, nearly snarling. "Fuck. Fuck and _fuck."_

A hard-bitten, cruel-eyed man glanced over at him from the driver's seat. "What's up, boss?"

"Quiet you, Haeda." Arkay growled. "Just get me and the package to the auction. Minimize the chit-chat."

"Fine," he muttered, as the kilometers slid by.

 _Why did I put him in charge of First, again?_ Arkay glanced at one of his highest officers, scowling inwardly. He sighed. He already knew.

 _Ninety-eight percent._

It took a certain sort of mindset to fight on the frontier, for years on end, for profit. A certain hard breed of mercenary that rose above the rest. A certain quality of spine.

 _Ninety-eight percent._

A mantra.

There was a lesson he'd learned from an old war memoir, years ago. Years of experience had proven the words true. A lesson that had guided him, one day to the next, as he built his company from nothing into one of the most powerful private military contractors in the Mars Sphere, starting with nothing but the clothes on his back and the lessons learned in the course of _earning_ his dishonorable discharge.

Ninety-eight percent of men on the battlefield crack, sooner or later. _Ninety-eight percent._ The vast majority of men simply were not born to be killers. They would posture, shout and threaten, like the neolithic cave-men of old. They would scheme and squabble and jostle and conspire in the prelude to battle, like a bucket of crabs. War was a good time and place to pursue your ambitions, after all. He of all people couldn't blame anyone for that. _Galars_ don't earn themselves, after all.

But, in the moment of the storm, ninety-eight percent of soldiers were simply not up to the task. Most would beg and cry, and sooner shit themselves than put a round between the enemy's eyes. They would sooner retreat than advance, and could only be forced to hold the line by a mix of bullshit promises and hard threats.

Of that ninety-eight percent, only a third could be counted on to perform, and they all made the mistake of compartmentalizing man from warrior. Wearing masks as the situation demanded, putting off the truth of what it was to be a killer.

Delaying the moment of reflection.

That minority would go home, and they would spill the toxicity of the battlefield into their own homes. They'd cry in their sleep, plaguing themselves with nightmares. Weakness. They'd hide under the blankets when the fireworks came out. They'd beat their wives, kill their friendships, and poison their families, and their own spirits. And in the end they'd all eventually fall to battle-fatigue (he _refused_ to use an egghead term like PTSD) and retire. Or they'd simply off themselves with a _.22_ and save everyone the bother. If they were smart (if they gave a fucking damn about their bunkmates) they did it in the bathtub.

Few were. He'd seen it often enough to know.

It might happen on the first mission, or the hundredth – but ninety-eight percent of soldiers always cracked, eventually. Few men were born to be killers. It was like how you found a proper dog for the fighting pits, really. You tested them not long after birth.

You found out if they could kill.

It was similar with soldiers. You couldn't train a man to become a killer. They either had it, or they didn't.

Doing a shit job of figuring that out and working around that fact was why all of the other PMCs sucked at their jobs, leeching on their client's money in times of peace and getting themselves and their men killed the moment the bullets started flying. Incompetent fucks. They hired every half-baked former _Colonial Police_ or _Gjallarhorn_ infantryman, assuming that putting on a fucking uniform and knowing how to brutalize or rape a few civilians gave you actual value on the battlefield.

His business philosophy got around the problem.

He knew how to find that essential one percent out of the remaining two. He didn't have any use for heroes. No, he found the killers, and he paid them well. The men who could get to the hundred-and-first battle, the _thousandth,_ and spit and laugh at the world and keep on going.

Psychologists and other eggheads called them the cracked men. The psychopaths. The insane. _Sociopathy. God Complexes. Empathy Deficit Disorders._ He scoffed at those labels.

They were simply the men who truly and genuinely found the act of killing about as exciting as taking a shit in the morning. Mostly. A few got off on the act, sometimes literally, and _those_ ones he kept in the front-line squads of the Third Division. He wanted predators. Monsters who would take a leash for a good enough salary. The ones who couldn't take a leash were best used as the bullet sponges that kept the better men alive.

It was a simple enough business model. Men of the old breed had a devil of a time re-adjusting to civilian life. Putting on a sheep's furs didn't stop a wolf from being what it was born to be. All he had to do was put out the feelers – find the _dishonorably discharged for combat violations,_ the ones who _refused to leave active duty,_ anyone who finished their combat tours and were immediately searching for new battlefields.

He found those men, and he put them in charge, and let he them find more men just like themselves. Haeda was one like that. Battaglia was another. Itsuka was the last, more of an experimental project if anything. Could child soldiers, who just so happened to be born killers, be trusted at a professional level? He was willing to find out. There was plenty of Martian gutter trash to work with, after all.

And if not, there were the Human Debris, and the many other flavors of _slave._

There were always plenty of slaves out there, after all.

Anything to save a _galar._

And his pet project had _worked_. Out on the frontier, the Third Division was racking up success after success, to the point that it was making the First decidedly nervous.

Then again, the Third had an advantage. A key one. Nah, two, in fact. First - the veterans and other grown men he'd hired were too old for the _Alaya-Vijnana_ procedure. They had the spirit, to be sure, but bodily limitations weren't so easily gotten around.

Second, the Third Division children were gutter trash in the purest sense of the word. Nearly to the last, they didn't have homes to go back to.

That made them strong. That made them _his._

Mind and body, they had a potential for ferocity that few could match. Merely surviving the streets was a form of natural selection. A process that created unrepentant killers, ready-made and malleable. Just as cream rises to the top of the barrel, scum sinks to the bottom. And what he'd found in the bottom was hard and _full_ of potential on the field of battle.

So what if he had to sell a few off to pay the short term expenses after _something_ happened to most of his money?

There were always more slaves. There were always more space rats.

And there were always more jobs.

 _Retirement?_ He scoffed at the word. What did retirement have to offer him? His own family was long dead, and spoiling his nieces could only entertain him so much. A treat best enjoyed in small doses, as it were.

He was born a soldier. He'd die a soldier, one way, or the other.

...

The minutes passed, and he grumbled, picking at his nose.

He sniffled, staring out the window. Ten minutes out from the base, they were now at the single most empty section of road between Chryse and the frontier. If they were going to show up _anywhere—_

A tear through the silence. Chatter on the telecoms. Excited, staticky jabbering.

Haeda Gunnel bellowed at the radio. _"What's going on out there, Theta Squadron!? GIMEL?"_

"-ell... tell - President Arkay! They're here."

" _Deploy!"_ Haeda roared. _"Deploy! Deploy! Deploy! It's go time, meatbags! IT'S TIME TO EARN YOUR PAY!"_

Haeda flicked a finger at the radio, switching the comms channel to another. A... bluer one, as it were.

 _"Oi! It's go time! COME ON DOWN!"_

Listening, the old soldier's thoughts darkened. The black cold. He did the one thing he'd been _aching_ to do, ever since some _rat_ had stolen his money,

His flesh tightened, the old scars stretching, and he grinned. He _grinned._ A good pain. An echo, the first taste of what he'd give to those _motherfuckers._

 _The other PMCs..._

They'd tried to ruin him. They'd tried to make him kneel, to make him sell his life's work. To make what he'd built, theirs.

 _Never._

He knew. He knew, that by refusing, by spitting on their incompetent ploy; by raising funds and dipping into his rainy-day funds, he'd cut off the enemy's options. By coming out here, by emerging in a loosely hidden show of force—just the kind of display that that slithering little leech of a man Noachis would pick up on, and from there alert his shadowy benefactors—he'd force the Enemy to emerge.

On his terms.

He pressed a certain button, and gears shifted. The windows darkened, and the world changed.

 _Finally..._

...

 _Time for justice._

* * *

In case anyone was wondering—I took down and redacted the original chapter 8, which was up and online for perhaps three hours. Sections of the original chapter 8 will be recycled into later parts of the story, without leading to a Tekkadan vs. Teiwaz conflict. Some have already been used here. For anyone who notices _—_ I hope you don't mind.

Thank you, reviewers— **goodwin761** especially—for warning me off from making a mistake. I've been spending too much time in the pre-anime timeline, and putting Teiwaz against Tekkadan this soon would be... a mistake. If I'd kept the other chapter, this story could have easily gotten to 80,000 words by the time Mika and Barbatos were reunited.

It's time to get to the events of the anime.

In case anyone thinks I'm making Marabura over the top _—nope._ The man's a slaver and a child slaver, who routinely uses illegal and risky biotechnological augmentations on kids as young as _twelve._ He simply disposes of the ones who fail the _Alaya-Vijnana_ procedure, throwing them back into the proverbial gutter to die like animals. The man's a monster. A human monster, but, a monster. He's responsible for the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands. If anything the anime was whitewashing the rational consequences of the actions we were seeing on-screen, to keep it viewable for teenaged, mainstream Japanese audiences. IBO would have been rated NC-17, if not X, if the things implied to happen off-screen were, well, _not off-screen._

Just ask yourself, what _does_ happen to the female Human Debris?

The answer doesn't bear thinking of.


	9. Barbatos

I don't own Iron Blooded Orphans

...

You've all waited for long enough. For the buildup to pay off. For the scattered arcs to come together. Here... it begins.

Enjoy.

* * *

Getting into GN Trading's headquarters in Grotzinger Center was a pain in the ass. My thoughts momentarily flashed to Atra, to the others, but I returned to myself, focusing. _She'll handle it. She has to._

Kudelia's protestors had pushed the Colonial Police deep into the Chryse downtown, steadily marching towards the Arbrau governor-general's office. Where they went, the city shut down. Slowly, I drove through the outer edges of the crowds.

The inner roads were completely impassable. They were blocked off by an endless sea of people, cheering and shouting as news media roamed the streets and helicopters circled overhead. Politicians were pontificating from the tops of benches, and a roadside stand selling _tents_ of all things had a line stretching around the block. A group of kids were selling lemonade in containers that weren't cups, but halved-out tear gas grenades. An unusually creative teenager was grilling burgers on the top of a ruined car's engine block, selling them as fast as he could fry them for a thousand and a half _galars_ each. A group of college girls were training a half-dozen parrots to sing in chorus _'fuck the colonial patriarchy!'_ A side street was hosting a dance party. Were they wearing _tails?_

I could only shake my head as I inched past in my car, trying to find a different route.

Orga and the others had joined CGS for the money, risking their lives for the one decently paying job that a ragtag street gang could reasonably get; a place in a mercenary company. Uneducated gutter trash could hardly do better than a stable job with Chryse Guard Security.

I'd just come along for the ride, following Orga's orders. I'd never even imagined doing something different. We joined as one—Orga, Biscuit, Eugene, Shino, even me, and dozens of others who believed in his dream. Hundreds followed. We'd all risked our lives on the hideously risky _Alaya-Vijnana_ surgery. I'd gone through with it three times. And for what? My hands clenched around the steering wheel. _For what?_

 _..._

For men that would cast us aside for a shit-stained _galar_ in a single heartbeat _._ To protect a small minority of wealthy citizens who had more money than sense, who cared almost nothing for those born with a little less luck. I looked around, at the almost obscene wealth surrounding me. The carefree citizens, living a lifestyle that I was already, slowly, getting used to. I nearly hated myself for it. But what was I going to do about it? _Money is power._ And I knew I needed both, and that I had to get used to it. I was even starting to enjoy it. But I could never, I would never, forget. I knew it, deep down, as I stared through the car's windows.

 _Being born with a little less luck is the one difference between living like this, and dying like trash_.

All throughout the solar system, it was a similar story. I knew that. I'd seen it for myself during our long journey, as we'd all followed Orga's dream to the end of the road. The road we'd been forced on by Gjallarhorn, and our own mistakes.

Mars was just one example out of hundreds. Wealth and peace and security for a few. Oppression and pain for all the rest.

Gjallarhorn's class system; the two sides of the aristocracy. To live like something out of a story, or to die young and forgotten, in the cold dark. And as time wore on, the few people caught in between were squeezed from both sides; I'd seen that in Dort. Good, gentle, hard-working people who turned to violence because they couldn't have justice.

I would bring it to them.

Time passed, and eventually I made my way out of the endless crowds I'd idiotically driven into. I didn't understand how there could be such chaos, such disruption on the city, but it all stayed... peaceful. If this could be called peace.

 _It must be because they're all citizens,_ I realized, staring out the windshield into the crowds beyond. Even through the closed, tinted, sound-proofed windows, I could hear the surrounding clamor, muted to a dull roar. There was some kind of festival in a nearby park. Dancing.

 _Different people. Different standards. The Colonial Police won't touch them._

If Human Debris had tried protesting like this, they would have been gunned down. If they were lucky. Free-men had no reason at all to get involved in politics, since they couldn't vote and 'didn't have the right to politically assemble'—one of my books put it like that. And if they did, they'd just be dispersed by force.

A sound. A familiar one. I could hear it even through the windows.

" _...to Duke Chelmsford, to Representative Norman Bernstein, to the rest of the Arbrau government, to the other economic federations, WE WILL say our demands again, and again..."_

My attention shifted. My head swiveled. _Kudelia._

" _...the right to trade on equal terms with the Earth Sphere! The right to regulate and tax our own half-metal. The right to defend ourselves and our own routes! The right to equality for all..."_

She yelled, and the crowd cheered with her.

She was standing on top of a hastily-erected pile of crates; a makeshift stage. She was a shining point of light in the middle of an ocean. My eyes involuntarily shifted to the surrounding buildings. My vision narrowed. _Snipers?_

No, of course not. It took me too long to realize. Gjallarhorn's enforcers operated in the dark. That was why they'd only attacked her, the first time around, after she was far away from the public eye.

But they were watching. I could see them, half-hidden in the shadows, in the darkest windows. Men and women in the grey-green uniforms of the Regulatory Bureau, staring down, and watching.

 _You won't touch her_ , I promised them, clenching the steering wheel so hard my hands ached.

...

Time passed, the roads creeped by, and the clamor of the crowds lessened behind me.

I had to give up entirely on getting through by car. What the crowds weren't blocking, the Colonial Police and Gjallarhorn were. No vehicles. No one getting past except on foot.

Even finding a place to park was infuriating. _No wonder a lot of the downtown people use bikes,_ I realized, roaming the further streets as I searched. Eventually I found a parking garage, staffed by a bleary-eyed attendant—the _cost_ made me blink ( _people pay that much to park_ , _anywhere, ever?_ ) in surprise.

And I _still_ had to park on the top floor.

A text message came in.

— _We're waiting in the lobby.—_

* * *

The sidewalks below were almost claustrophobic. A steaming, sweltering mass of _people._ I had to push and shove my way through, and the human tide—mostly young people, as far as I could tell—shot me leery looks when they noticed my suit.

 _They must think I'm with the colonial government._ The thought made me snort. I almost regretted taking the suit, but minutes later, it was probably the only thing that got me through the line of colonial police. They looked at me suspiciously, and inspected my I.D.; but they let me pass.

The corporate heartland beyond was almost deserted. Scattered executives roamed, tailed by entire _teams_ of private security guards. The few men I got close to, looked nervous. Worried. The shops and cafes were all closed. The shining corporate capital had been reduced to a skeleton crew of the most essential of the essential.

It felt like a city under siege.

GN Tower was the same. I had a moment to adjust in the lobby, breathing in the cold, conditioned air, bewildered at how empty it was, and then—

"Ah, Mr. Augus!" My head swiveled to a small cafe off to the back of the lobby. I started walking. Noachis was sitting there, waving me down. He was flanked by several bodyguards. Sitting across from him was a—

I didn't stop walking. My eyes didn't widen. But I did, nearly, stumble.

She was the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen in my life.

Aside from Kudelia.

And then I was at the third at their table.

"You're a bit late, Mr. Augus." Noachis lightly observed. I shrugged, glancing back to the door for a moment.

"Took a while to get through that crowd."

His eyed widened, and he grimaced, visibly scowling. "I knew I should have sent our helicopter to pick you up. My apologies."

"It's fine," I said. _He flew here?_

"The protestors of late have been... a menace." Noachis grimaced. "The Bernstein girl's cause serves our purposes, but it's making a lot of men in the aristocracy nervous. If she turned on her own father, how reliable will she really be, for our purposes? _That's_ the question they're all asking. That, and if she's serious about pushing for _democracy_ , of all things." He scoffed. "Things would be a lot worse for her if the Arbrau governor-general wasn't an ally."

I cocked my head. "Huh?"

"Duke Chelmsford is an old friend of my father's." Noachis explained. "Our families are as one in the cause of independence. His holdings are small, but the most valuable of all, in some ways. For now, our interests align behind the Bernstein girl's shadow." The confusion must have shown on my face, because he clarified. "He owns the land that downtown Chryse is built on."

I glanced at the floor for a moment before returning to him. _Remember who you're dealing with..._ "Interesting. But that's not why I'm here."

"Yeah, yeah." The girl shrugged casually, chewing on a baguette. The movement threw her hair over her shoulder. "You've got a highway heist to pull off. We've already picked up the gist of it."

I glanced at her, then turned to Noachis; a wordless question.

"Right," the man frowned. "Mr. Augus, meet my little sister. Neria, meet Mikazuki Augus. You happy yet?"

" _Please."_ She scowled. "I didn't come all this way just to say _hi_ to the boy wonder."

I could only stare. I could see the family resemblance, physically, but all the rest...

"Yo." She turned to me. "Hire me."

" _Huh?"_

I didn't even realize I'd spoken.

"Kudelia's already halfway to having her own army," she explained. "I'm not going to be left in the dirt by the blonde wonder. I'm useful. Use me."

I turned to Noachis, wordlessly asking, demanding through my eyes, _what in the—_

"I apologize, Mr. Augus." Noachis sighed. "She was quite insistent on meeting with you. She very much wants to get involved with the independence movement."

I stared at the girl, and cocked my thumb over my shoulder.

"The protests are right outside. Go be useful there."

She stared for a moment, stammering. "T-that _plebeian pack of clowns— "_

"I've got battles to fight..." _what was her name?_ "...Neria. This isn't a story, this isn't a game." My voice hardened. "If you follow me you might die." I paused. "And how would some aristocrat girl be useful?"

 _What does plebeian mean?_

She didn't react like I expected. She leaned forward, eyes blazing.

"I've got a triple liberal-arts and business major with a GPA logarithmically approaching 4.0, you pedant! I'm an award-winning creative writer, I'm the number two heir of the third-wealthiest duke on the planet. I personally know or know of every single member of the high peerage in the Mars Sphere. I can place a _.50_ though a bull's eye at one kilometer in nearly any weather with an _eighty-four-point-two percent_ overall hit-rate! I've done an Iron Man triathlon. I nearly qualified for the Martian Olympic sailing and sniper teams. I'm certified in Ariadne encryption protocols _Quartz_ through _Sapphire._ I've got a viscountess-level security clearance and the right of way on every Gjallarhorn route and docking terminal from Mercury to Oort. If you can't find a good use for me you aren't trying hard enough."

Then she breathed, panting for air.

 _I understood... most of that._

Apparently she took the challenge as a call to action.

I stared at Noachis.

"Our father spoils her too much," he explained.

If she was being honest about _half_ of that, I couldn't deny her usefulness. I looked her over, at the determination in her eyes. With a single look I could tell that she was being honest. _Probably._

"You're fine with this?" I asked him.

He shrugged. "She's been, ah, quite insistent."

I turned to her. "Why?"

" _Fuck_ the investment banking internship," she growled. "Getting involved with the military side of the independence movement from day one onwards would be the best career experience _ever."_

I stared, utterly baffled.

"Are all nobles like this?" I asked Noachis, mystified.

"No." He sighed. "She's, ah, somewhat unique. Just keep her far away from the fighting. She's best at coordination of assets."

"Right," I said, as she frowned at her brother. _Biscuit's going to hate her,_ I thought, staring at her.

She really did look like Noachis.

Then a harsh growl of a voice sliced through the air. "Oi, what are you kids going on about?"

 _Gesler._

"Leo!" Noachis stood and shook his hand. The hybrids were taking point off in the distance, guarding the tower's entrances. "It's rare to see you come all the way down here."

Gesler shook his head. "The tower's as empty as a chapter seven bankruptcy today. And we're past working hours anyways. Might as well." He sat down. "So, what's the situation?"

I leaned forward. "I need to hit a convoy tomorrow morning."

"Chryse Guard Security refused to sell," Noachis explained. "President Marabura is bringing in... of all the damned things, a _Gundam Frame_ to an auction tomorrow to raise capital." He paused, hesitating. "It would be... enough. I've shut him out of the capital markets via my contacts; he can't borrow money, at least not from the banks in the Mars Sphere." He sighed. "I never expected Marabura had a physical asset of that caliber. I would have used different strategies if I'd known."

"Sorry." I caught the look in his eyes. "I never thought that he'd sell it."

Noachis shrugged. "I just wish you'd mentioned that he had such a reserve asset."

Gesler tapped his fingers on the table. "A Gundam, huh..." he turned to me, eyes hard. "Which one?"

"Barbatos," I said.

His eyes widened. "The eighth in the series, then. One of the _dukes_." He paused. "Wait. You're telling me that that little cock _Marabura_ had one of the Lost Gundam Frames?"

"Huh?" I said. "Lost?"

"The Gundam Frames are legendary, Augus." The shadows framing Gesler's face seemed to lengthen in the sunset, his mechanical eye glittering in the dark. "Every single mobile suit frame design in the past _three hundred years_ has been a derivation—a downgrade, a stripping down—of the original series of seventy-two prototypes. Cutting away at their effectiveness until they became profitable to manufacture, cutting away at their potential until they could be piloted by men of flesh and blood. The originals were made to fight world wars, and were piloted by the best men in the history of our civilization. And, to top it off for our purposes, they were built with technologies that are illegal _beyond_ illegal, now. Nearly fifty of them were lost or destroyed in the Calamity War. Only a few are left, and Gjallarhorn's highest nobles own nearly all of them. They're beyond price, for any practical purpose." He breathed, his eyes tightening, and continued.

"When I say _Lost,_ I'm talking about one of the forty-six presumed to be destroyed. This _Barbatos_ is one of them." He scowled. "If my memory is still worth a shit, anyway. Like the _Flauros_ that you had that old goat Powell dig up."

"You've memorized all the Gundam Frames?" I asked, cocking my head. It was actually surprising.

"Yeah." Gesler scoffed. "What kid doesn't grow up dreaming of how to be a hero? Besides, you'd be surprised when it turns out to be relevant." He paused. "No, I'm not talking about you."

Neria raised her eyebrow, inclining her head. Gesler ignored her.

"You ever hear of the Tanto Tempo Colonies out near the Luna Sphere, Augus?"

I shook my head.

"Gundam Astaroth turned up around there, a few months back, after some drama with the Warren family. A power struggle over the Avalanche colonies, I hear. Whether to stay allied with Gjallarhorn or to pivot towards Teiwaz. One of my colleagues works in a dark colony in the Luna remnants. He's has been tearing his hair out over the issue." Gesler clarified when I frowned. "The Gundam's been preying on his smuggling routes. There are a _few_ others I know of that are still in the Outer Spheres. Not many."

Noachis, surprisingly, was the one to respond.

"Which of the other Gundam Frames are still out there? Maybe, if we could find more allies— "

"Don't count on it." Gesler interrupted. "There's eight or nine I know of outside the Earth Sphere. Astaroth, Vual, Dantalion. They're all in or near the Luna Sphere. The Brewers have Gusion somewhere in the Belt. The Grey King of Saturn has Halphas and Malphas. The Duke of Europa has the Andromalius. _Meaning_ that it's allied with Teiwaz. The Valac was last seen in Dark Space, pirating on the Uranus-Neptune trading routes. _Years ago."_ He scoffed. "No word since. Might have been destroyed. Gjallarhorn has the other seventeen."

"And we'll have two," Neria said, smirking.

Gesler turned to Noachis, chewing on a muffin. "Remind me, Taniel." He glanced at her. "Who is this chick?"

He didn't elaborate on the implicit understanding. _Can she be trusted? Does she need to be removed?_

"She's my sister, Leo." He turned to her, sighing. "She can be discreet, when it suits her."

Gesler turned to her. "See that being nice and quiet _suits you_ , little lady. I don't care how high-born you are. If you betray our cause I'll bury you." Gesler glanced to me, smirking. "If Augus doesn't do it first."

Noachis leaned forward, glowering. The girl hadn't quite flinched. But she had paled. "That isn't necessary, Leo. We can all be trusted here."

Gesler scoffed. "I find that trust comes easier when it's backed up by, ah, how should I put it? _Penalties._ Highly _explicit_ ones. _"_ He grinned, slowly, staring her down. "I'm sure you get the point, little lady."

"Yeah." She nodded, slowly. "I do. I also get that my father owns two _Shrike-class_ battleships, and five armored assault carriers. We've got six thousand good men. We can take you." She paused. "Dick."

Gesler just laughed. And laughed. He turned to Noachis.

"I like the girl. She's got more spunk than your bony ass."

Noachis thinly smiled. "She's highly effective." He turned to me. "You'll see for yourself."

"Maybe." I was skeptical. "How can she help with the job tomorrow?"

"Yeah, about that." Gesler leaned forward. "Should we consider the _Barbatos_ an enemy combat asset?"

" _Probably not_ ," I said, stressing the word. "The First Division doesn't have anyone trained in mobile suit combat. No one in the Third Division will use it against me, I've already made sure of that. And when I last saw it, it was stripped down. It wouldn't even be able to walk."

"Hm." Gesler frowned, tapping his fingers on the table, thinking. "Let's play it safe. I'll send one of the mercenaries I keep on retainer. He normally contracts with with the Red Line Company. He's got a military surplus _Geirail_ Frame. I'll call up Red Line, clear it with them, have 'em send a few platoons as an attached backup and support unit." He turned to Noachis. "You handle the main forces. I've gotta keep my own men in the city. I'll be too busy with the other job to spare 'em." He turned to me. "What're you offering, Augus?"

"I'll use Flauros. I've also asked my friends in the Third Division to arrange a certain surprise."

All three of them raised their eyebrows.

"A sabotage," I clarified.

Gesler grinned. "Good. Should we expect 'em to turn up?"

I shook my head. "No. They have other orders."

Neria leaned forward. Her brother's eyes followed her. "You're _personally_ piloting?"

I nodded. "Yeah."

She looked me over again, slowly and considering, as though seeing me for the first time. Something flickered in her eyes. "I'd like to see that."

Just how weird was this girl?

I dismissed her and turned to Gesler.

"After this is over..."

"Yeah, yeah." He waved his hand dismissively. "I know. I've made the calls. They're coming." He paused, looking at me seriously. "You better be ready."

My response wasn't quite a smile. It was a physical promise. A thing of teeth and certainty.

* * *

With the sunrise, rubber burned, and I set the point for the ambush.

Neria relayed my orders to her family's soldiers over the radio, and I watched the road from the top of a nearby hill, waiting. Half an hour earlier the two of us had called a meeting of all the forces, and I gave each company of men their orders, Neria coordinating and answering questions. After, we took a spare mobile worker and drove to the top of a hill next to the road; a vantage point, waiting and observing, and waiting.

Waiting.

The Mobile worker was out of sight from the road, parked just below us. Wouldn't be good if we were noticed mid-battle.

I felt... strange. I'd slept. Enough, anyway. I'd eaten. But I was nervous. Beyond nervous. Not because of the fight coming. But because of the people I had to fight _with._ Because I was the one making their decisions, choosing the places where they might die.

I hated it. No wonder Orga had always looked so wound-up and tired before the serious battles. _I wish he was here..._

It really was easier to be nothing more than a pilot. To have my mind on nothing but the enemy right in front of me.

It felt like a luxury that I might not have, ever again. A luxury that no amount of wealth or power could ever buy.

 _Responsibility._

I hated it.

I knew this land. I would make this count. But so little was under my own control, and my friends had their own battle to fight. A much, much harder one than this one, maybe. The soldiers I had...

 _They aren't Tekkadan,_ I reminded myself, looking down on the clamor. _I have no idea how they'll react in a fight. Will they hold? Will they follow orders? Or will they run? They're the girl's, not mine..._

Near the top of my list of worries was the knife-slender, dark-haired, dark-eyed figure standing next to me. Her hair fell to the small of her back, and riffled through the morning wind like a black flag.

Noachis couldn't come. He had something else to do.

"—Kerjack, get your Red Line mercs behind that hill over there! Four o'clock eastwards! Wait for the signal. Hellas Four, Six, Seven, hold the road at Point Bravo! Stop them in their tracks! Two, Three, Five, hold behind the opposite hill off west. Flank them from both sides with the mercenaries supporting. Hellas Eight, stay further down the road. Under that bridge! Cut off their retreat. Don't let anyone in or out! Block off the road from civilians."

She flicked a button on the radio. "Hey, masked man."

The voice was staticky over the radio, coming from his holding position over a kilometer off the road. The _Geirail's_ Ahab reactor was interfering. We hadn't had the time to set up protected communications, so I ordered the mercenary away until and if he'd be needed.

The moment if and when he entered, every radio on the battlefield might stop working.

" _...What?"_

A low, dangerous rasp.

"You got your orders?"

I could hear the annoyed _tsk_ even through the static of the radio. _"...I got... message, little girl. ...follow my orders."_ A pause. _"For now."_

The line went dead. "What a dick." She scoffed. "I hope he dies."

"Not before he carries out his orders," I said, smiling despite myself.

The mercenary didn't work for Gesler, exactly. He was an independent contractor kept on contract by the Red Line Company's Martian arm to clean out any raiders that got too close to the mines in the Lawless Territories. Gesler and Noachis had simply hired him for the day, splitting the cost for some obscene amount of _galars._

As far as I knew Noachis had paid for the eighty Red Line mercenaries on his own. With them, trailing in back, came a single truck staffed by six women and two men; the _Geirail's_ support unit. They kept away from the rest of the forces; like their leader, they... valued their privacy, trusting only themselves.

That was the strange part. The small mercenary unit followed their nameless leader's example, wearing heavy, face-concealing masks, with thick goggles that hid the eyes. Their leader had a flair for the dramatic, wearing a baggy, grey longcoat that hid the outlines of his form, a grey fedora hat topping it all off. Between that, the long pants, the grey gloves—I couldn't even tell what color his skin was.

 _It's smart,_ I'd already realized. _He's protecting himself, making it harder for thieves to track him or his friends._

Mobile Suits. One of the most expensive and powerful military assets ever built. It made sense that an independent contractor, without only a small company of his own to protect him, would take whatever steps he could to protect himself and his people.

"Neria," I said, in a moment of quiet. "Why are you here, really?"

She glanced to me, as she looked through her binoculars. "I meant what I said earlier." She smiled, lightly. "Not everyone has a hidden agenda, you know."

"Hm." I grunted neutrally. "I don't believe you. Not really."

"Tell you what." She turned to me, setting the binoculars aside. "We get through this, I'll tell you my own story, if we get a chance. In the meantime..." she trailed off. "Mind explaining why your Gundam's in lousy shape?"

We both turned to the scene of chaos taking place just off the road, at the base of the hill the two of us stood atop of. Hidden in a small outflow channel. The wind carried their frantic voices up to us.

" _Finish bolting on that kneeguard ASAP!"_

" _Re-run the stress test on the rear thrusters, I don't have a good feeling about the left one! And get me more oxidant!"_

" _Did we seriously forget to bring the red wrench box? What lousy intern..."_

Neria could only raise her eyebrow as we looked on. I shook my head.

"They didn't have the time. But I should go get ready. How much longer?"

"Minutes." Her expression voice was grim. "Eight, if we're lucky. You can see the dust cloud to the south if you look hard enough. I'll shoot the red flare when it's time. I'll shoot the green one when you give the signal, as ordered."

I raised my own binoculars, staring south, where her own gaze had been lingering. That cloud on the horizon... yeah. _That's them. Has to be. More than I'd expected...and slower than they should be._

"I wish you'd brought more," I whispered.

She frowned. "It's all we've got in this part of the planet. Almost all of our House's soldiers are defending our lands back in Hellas." She shrugged. "We'll just have to make do. Good thing we've got the mercs."

Her brother had only been able to loan her a set of twenty mobile workers and maybe three hundred infantry. It had to be enough. More than enough. Maybe this wouldn't even need to come to a fight. Marabura wouldn't deploy more than a fraction of the Third Division for a peaceful delivery to an auction house, going into the _inner_ territories, where there was hardly ever any trouble.

 _If things don't go as planned, with the support Gesler gave me, we should be fine._ I knew that. Two mobile suits would trump any amount of lesser forces.

I spoke into my radio, flicking to the support channel. "How much more time do you all need?"

" _Honestly, Augus?"_ The garage manager's wife groused over the radio—it was like half their company had come out to continue the repairs along the road. _"We'd need another week to get this thing up to standard. You brought it to us in shit, shit shape."_

"You've got five minutes," I whispered.

" _That bonus you mentioned better be one big fat heaping—! "_

I cut her off.

Neria shook her head, laughing. "I hope you aren't always gonna be such a rough boss to work for."

"A lot of men are about to die," I muttered, staring at the cloud on the horizon. "If I'd had more time..." I shook my head. "It's all Marabura. None of this needed to happen."

"Tch." She scowled. "Never liked that fat fuck." I turned to her, confused, and she clarified.

"He sometimes shows up at the formal balls in the governor-general's manse. Schmoozing with clients. He is _such_ a lech." She smiled, and patted the long form strapped over her shoulder. "Then again, that's why I've got this."

 _A GJO-45._ A special-operator-grade anti-material sniper rifle. The kind of thing ordinary civilians and PMCs weren't even allowed to _own._

I glanced at the thing and shook my head. _Laws mean nothing if you're born high enough._ "You better shoot straight."

She chuckled. "I nearly qualified for the Olympics with _her,"_ she stroked the rifle's barrel lovingly, "...little sister. I'll be fine."

 _Olympics._ A word I'd heard once or twice, at most. _Some Earth sports competition._ _Citizens-only_ , I remembered. _Free-men and Human Debris can't qualify_ , I remembered some gutter trash saying, in the years Orga and I still lived on the streets.

 _Not many of us cared about that aristocrat-only... spectacle._

An unfamiliar word. Using it was awkward, even in my own thoughts. I was still reading; still learning. It would be a while before I could even manage a half-assed job of _pretending_ to be educated.

"Mikazuki." Her voice cut through my thoughts. She was staring into her binoculars. "What the _hell_ is that?"

I looked. The front of the Third Division's column could now be seen, turning around the corner of a low hill.

 _A mobile worker?_

No. It was too big. Much too big. It took up both lanes of the road, stretching to the outer limits. The CGS mobile workers and infantry trucks kept away from it, staying behind or well in front.

It would have run them over. Flattened them on the road.

The sort of weapon that even mobile suits would hesitate to face.

"A tank," I whispered. "A heavy siege tank."

"You aren't _allowed_ to bring those into Chryse!" She growled. "What the hell is he thinking?"

As we watched, the Third Division's numbers became clear, and my breath grew faint. _At least three hundred. Thirty, thirty-five mobile workers. Half the entire Division. Maybe more._

The kind of numbers you'd bring to nothing less than a war.

"He was expecting us," I whispered. "He knew he'd be hit along the road."

" _How?"_ her voice was half-strangled.

I shrugged. "Paranoia, maybe."

As we watched, the Third Division suddenly swarmed into action. Like a disturbed colony of ants.

The first rule of war. If you can see them, they can probably see you.

"Well," she muttered. "I guess negotiations are off."

I nodded. "Do it."

She pulled the trigger, and fired the red flare into the air. She screamed into the radio.

"Hellas Four, Six—and Seven! It's time to mosey! hold Point Bravo! Two, Three, Five, hold position!"

Then the shooting started.

The Third Division's mobile workers separated into two columns like a parting river, moving onto the land on either side of the road. They clustered behind low rocks or other natural cover and fired their light autocannons in barrages. The infantry trucks deployed their soldiers like tight-packed cans of sardines; the soldiers clustered behind their mobile workers, took point, and started firing in volleys.

Neria's forces met them in kind. They were outnumbered.

There was no quarter, no dialogue. As soon as the two sides saw one another the battle was joined.

"Four, Six, Seven!" Neria shouted into the radio. "Charge!"

The other half of her forces surged from over the western hill. The Third Division's flank collapsed to meet them, and then—

" _Oh god— "_

A huge explosion. Two mobile workers detonated into flaming chunks. Thick black smoke poured from the remains.

The momentum of the western charge was broken. The two sides entrenched themselves into siege lines.

"That tank..." Neria growled.

The shot on the hillside was nothing but a side-action for the siege tank. A momentarily assistance of allies. The turret swiveled, cocked downwards and it fired again. Annihilating a small squadron. It stayed on the road and waded into the center of Neria's lines, shrugging off the light autocannon fire of a dozen mobile workers and a hundred men like it didn't even register. Where it turned, men died.

"Nanolaminated armor...?" She whispered, confused.

 _It's got four machine guns and two light autocannons_ , I realized, staring. _And the turret. And they're all firing._ I grimaced. _Where did Marabura get this thing? Did the Third Division deserters steal it the first time around?_

"No," I answered, staring as the tank shrugged off volley after volley of fire like a mechanical god of war. I honed in on the scattered dents and craters. "Only something with an Ahab reactor can have functioning reactive armor." My voice turned grim. "It's just got really thick, _normal_ , armor."

"KERJACK!" Neria screamed at the Red Line Company mercenary commander over radio. "Head in! Get that tank!"

" _Message received."_ A hard voice responded.

Neria's forces were outnumbered, but more heavily armed. Aside from that tank. They were giving as much as they received. More. But the Third Division was heavily dug into their positions, while the tank was wreaking chaos, distracting Neria's men.

For the Red Line Company mercenaries to make their maximum impact on the eastern flank...

I raised my cell phone, staring into the reflective screen as I powered it on. _Biscuit, you better have come through..._

I typed it in. _ASWG08._

And the Third Division's forces screamed. The plastic explosives buried in the innards of the treads of the Mobile workers exploded. The mobile workers weren't destroyed. But they were crippled. Paralyzed. Off balance. Unable to move. Neria's forces began tearing into them on by one. The Third Division's ranks collapsed into chaos.

The siege tank kept firing.

 _Sabotage._ The scheme I'd imagined in my planning. The message had been received by the others, the explosives planted. Just as I'd ordered.

 _Thank you, Biscuit._

Neria _wooped,_ cheering. I matched her grin in kind as she gave me the thumbs-up. "Good shit, boss."

She shouted into her radio. "Hellas Eight! It's time! Ambush them from the rear."

"It's time," I said, grinning. "The tank. Get it!"

"Aye-aye!" She fired the green flare. The signal. "Hellas One! Get the tank!"

And the armored assault helicopter emerged from behind a far hill, the air screaming in its wake. It strafed the Third Division. Machine guns fired from above, pounding into the enemy. Volley after volley of rockets hit the tank.

The tank's treads stiffened. Stopped moving. One of them broken, the heavy plate armor cracked. It came to a dead stop in the road, no longer able to move. Stopped in its tracks, the side-autocannons and machine guns destroyed.

She flicked the radio off and muttered. "Where the _hell_ is Kerjack..."

The tank kept firing, despite being immobile.

Something shifted in the distance. The heavy two-lane truck in the back of the Third Division's column began to unfold. My cheer dissipated. My eyes widened as I stared.

It tore the heavy black tarp off and stood straight, seeming to relish the action, almost _stretching_. It strode up the column and picked up a heavy black war-mace from a flat-bedded truck. A familiar one. It hefted the haft over the shoulder, and an enraged voice bellowed out across the battlefield.

Everything paused.

" _IT'S BEEN TWENTY YEARS, RATS. TWENTY YEARS SINCE I'VE HAD TO BRING THIS THING OUT. I'M GOING TO ENJOY THIS."_

 _Marabura. He's piloting Barbatos..._

My vision ran black at the edges. My hands clenched so tight my nails dug into my skin. I could feel blood.

 _You..._

"fuckfuckfuckfuck..." Neria was panicking. I came back to myself. I grabbed her shoulder and shouted at her. "Call in the masked mercenary! Now!"

She came back to herself. We locked eyes. She nodded and shouted into the radio. "Barbatos is hot! I repeat, Barbatos is hot. We need reinforcements!"

A quiet voice spoke through the radio. _"Ack...ledged, little girl. I'm on... way. Twenty seconds."_

I took the radio from her for a moment, ordering the mercenary. "Be careful of the mace. It has a pile-driver at the end."

" _Acknowledged."_

We could only stare as Marabura tore into Hellas Eight as they ambushed from the back and failed. No chance at all. Marabura swept them all aside with sweeping strikes of the mace. The flaming chunks of mobile workers scattered over the hills, and the red foam of dead men sprayed from the massive weapon in clouds with each quaking strike.

The tank was still in the fight. Immobilizing it hadn't done our side a single favor. It turned into a fortress under siege, and the Third Division rallied to it, pushing Neria's forces back. Men died, mobile workers detonated, and the smell of cordite and greasy smoke filled the air.

"Where the fuck is Kerjack!" Neria snarled, flicking at the radio as the masked mercenary's _Geirail_ charged into Barbatos and the titans clashed in the distance. "Hey! Where the _fuck—"_

 _Fuck._ Adrenaline poured through me. I sprinted and threw her over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

"What the hell are you doing!" She screamed.

I _jumped_ and threw us both down the hill. We tumbled over the gravel.

And the hill behind us exploded.

 _The tank._ The driver noticed the two of us standing on top of the hill and took a potshot at us. Despite being at the center of the combined fire of an entire army. If I hadn't seen the swiveling turret...

" _Miss Noachis!"_ A voice shouted through the dented radio. One of the commanders of Neria's family forces. It was battered, lying in the dirt. She picked it up, wincing, as she flashed me a grateful smile. "I'm alive, Morganroe!" She panted."Just get that fucking tank." She leaned against the side of her mobile worker, wincing.

" _We need reinforcements, Miss!"_ A scream. _"There are too many! We don't have heavy enough weapons to finish the tank off on our own! Over and out!"_

The earth quaked as Barbatos and the masked mercenary's _Geirail_ tore into one another. I spared a glance, and my eyes widened.

 _Marabura... does he have Alaya-Vijnana? That reaction..._

The mercenary was being steadily driven across the landscape. His armor was starting to crack under the pressure, his motions becoming frantic.

 _He's losing,_ I realized, staring at the battle. _Fuck._

"Right." She snarled. "Where the _fuck_ is Kerjack." She flicked at the radio. "Oi, _asshole!_ Where the fuck are you?!"

" _We're terminating the contract, Mikazuki Augus, Neria Noachis."_ The voice on the other end growled. _"We didn't sign up for a suicide mission. Your intelligence was off. See you around."_ A pause. " _Or not."_

The line went dead.

We stared at one another. She spoke first, voice flat and scared. "What the _hell..."_

A voice barked from the radio. Neria's commander. " _Miss Noachis!_ _What is that, above?"_

We looked up, at the burning sky. My jaw fell slack.

"What is that, Mikazuki?" Neria's voice was full of fear.

 _Four of them..._

"Marabura's reinforcements..." I whispered. "Mobile suits."

"Gjallarhorn...?" she asked the air, despairing. "Why...?"

I shook my head. This had gotten worse than I'd ever imagined.

The siege tank-turned-fortress shot the armored assault helicopter out of the sky.

"Stay safe. I'm getting to Flauros."

She said nothing, staring up at the four burning meteors as I _ran_ down the hill's side, away from the fight. Into the drainage channel. I ran past the hastily scattered piles of components and parts and yelled at the technicians. At the manager's wife.

"It's time! I'm going in."

"No, we aren't completely ready—!"

I climbed up over a short ladder. I clambered into the cockpit as the technicians scattered and disconnected their cables and fueling lines from the Gundam. I settled into the seat, closed the hatch, and activated the _Alaya-Vijnana_ system.

And then it all went wrong.

* * *

A void. Pure darkness.

 _Pain._

An impression. Knowledge. A sleeping _not-_ consciousness. It had been asleep. For so long. Fought and lived and died. War. Endless war. So long ago. It ended an angel, fighting among the stars. A shared ultimate sacrifice. Its other half died, burnt by the atmosphere. The mortally wounded angel fell away, crippled, burning in the endless sky.

 _Pain._

And then Flauros fell to earth, broken and shattered and burned.

And there it slept. The ages of the world swept passed by, and before long, all was dark, the inner fire extinguished. Not dead.

Asleep.

An awareness, rousing itself in the void.

Something woke up.

...

 _...YOU CANNOT BE HERE..._

...

 _PAIN._

* * *

Screaming.

I could see the sky. Was it red?

No. Blood in my eyes. My nose.

My thoughts were bleary. Vague and slow.

The cockpit hatch was open. A man and a woman were kneeling over me, starting to disconnect me from the system.

Voices.

 _Pain._

"—no, it's not that! It's not a backlash. He can't sync at all. It's like the system itself is keeping him out!"

"What the _hell_ are you _— "_

The voices faded out. I wiped the blood from my eyes. I ignored them entirely. I ignored the pain. I ignored the splitting, aching headache. I _screamed_ through the connection. With every second the pain got worse, like an egg in a microwave.

 _HELP ME, or they'll all die! Everyone! Even Shino._ I tore at my own memory for the images; the memories came in flashes, one after the other. Flauros buried in the dirt in two different worlds. Shino piloting it like they'd been made for eachother. The battle against the bird. Him, laughing and living, painting the Gundam in his own bright colors. The moment of near triumph against the Arianhrod fleet, ruined by the girl. By my own mistake. The hundreds, thousands of hours he'd spent bringing it from a ruined wreck to the thing that had nearly given us _victory._

I took it all. I took those memories, and I _threw them_ at that black wall between me and Flauros. I launched them through the darkened connection. Unlike everything else; unlike my words, they passed through. And I began to tear the wall down.

The connection wavered. I felt something. An impression. A reflection.

Not human. But not entirely alien. Just as past pilots—I knew, now, that there had only ever been one—had connected to it, it had connected to them. Shaping itself in _his_ brilliant shadow. It learned. It _could_ learn. It didn't know what it was to be human. But it knew how to try.

It felt confused.

 _...how...?_

It wasn't my own voice. But it was. I felt it. It wasn't my own thought. _But it was_. It was Flauros, speaking, if that word could really apply. It didn't. Language could only touch at the edges of describing this not-dialogue.

' _I don't know. I don't know! I don't know how I'm here. But I am, and I need your help, or everyone will die!"_

 _..._

 _...impossible—_

' _WHY?'_

 _..._

 _...you belong... to another..._

 _..._

 _...you, me... together..._

 _..._

 _...incompatible..._

 _..._

 _...both would be..._

 _..._

 _...destroyed..._

 _..._

The connection closed again, and I didn't resist. I couldn't resist. I was petrified. In shock. _I failed._

I started to hear the workers, the soldiers, screaming for me. Gjallarhorn's suits were nearly here, the mobile workers and infantry were being pushed back, and dying by the dozens. And the nameless mercenary was losing to Marabura, the earth quaking where they fought as Barbatos steadily tore into the _Geirail_.

A ping. In the instant before the connection darkened, Flauros sent something. A final message. A final impression, even more alien than the ones before.

But I knew what it wanted. The impression registered, and I smiled, despite myself. My thoughts started to clear. Despite the collapsing chaos around me.

Flauros was asking me to bring Shino home.

The only problem was that he was either tens, or hundreds of kilometers away, depending on which orders he'd followed.

I wiped the blood from my eyes. I severed the _Alaya-Vijnana_ connection and left the cockpit, shoving past the technicians. It was chaos outside. The technicians had given up on me; the girl was back on top of the hill, standing on top of her mobile worker, rallying her family's forces, screaming furiously over her radio.

The technicians were packing their things and preparing to run.

I looked up. _Three minutes,_ I guessed. _Three minutes until those four Grazes land._

I wiped the blood from my eyes, my nose.

As I stared up, something changed. One of the four broke off from the others and moved to the southeast. _Huh?_ I stared for an instant. Before long, it would be out of sight, over the far edge of the horizon. _Where the hell is it going?_

I put the thought aside. Irrelevant. _I can turn this around! I know I can._

I ran to the girl. She was standing on top of a mobile worker, staring at a tablet computer running real-time battle-data. She was furiously relaying orders, trying to save as many lives as she could. "Neria!"

She sent me a look of blistering contempt, staring down at me. "What the hell do you want, you asshole? The Gundam, the tank, Gjallarhorn! So much went wrong! So much you should have known. So much you should have warned us of! Getting hundreds of men killed uselessly isn't enough for you?" She looked up at the falling _Grazes_ with despair. Her hair arced in the wind, and the setting sun cast shadows across her features. "It's over."

"No," I said, glancing to the battle between the mercenary and Barbatos. "I have a plan."

"So do I, asshole. Saving the lives of my men, surrendering, and giving you to Gjallarhorn. I suppose they'll shoot you." She shrugged, not quite crying. "I can look forward to prison, I suppose. Or a huge ransom. Depending on who exactly captures me." She scowled down at me. "I'm not going to leave my soldiers behind."

"Give me that mobile worker."

She stared for a moment. "Huh?"

" _Hurry!"_

She jumped down. And punched me in the face.

I stepped back, blinking in surprise and sudden pain, working my jaw to and fro. I could already feel a bruise forming under my hand.

"Honestly," she spat. "I should just shoot you. Save _them_ the bother." She turned to the battlefield, and heaved a broken sigh. "Go. Go get yourself killed, asshole. It's the least you can do."

I was already climbing down the mobile worker's hatch. I grimaced. _It doesn't have Alaya-Vijnana. One of the newer models._

I looked, and looked. Frantically. _What does it have...?!_

A light autocannon. Useless. An explosive primary cannon. Useless. ATV capabilities. Marginally useful. Rocket-propelled incendiary and smoke grenades. _Useful._ A...

I grinned, suddenly.

It had what I needed.

And then I was off, charging for the battle between the mercenary and Marabura. Barbatos was tearing into what was left of the _Geirail_. The battle had gone poorly, the _Geirail_ pushed back close to the scattered remnants of Neria's soldiers. The fortress-tank was _still_ active, despite being immobilized, despite half its bulk being on fire. Still firing its primary cannon into Neria's soldiers.

It was surrounded by the dead of both sides, in heaping, smoking piles.

I locked my eyes on the battle between the mercenary's suit was down an arm and the primary weapon; the heavy autocannon he'd entered the battle with was nowhere to be seen.

The mercenary was flailing with a light mace as Marabura ran around him in almost literal circles, tearing the mercenary's nanolaminated armor off in pieces, targeting the chest. The mercenary's panicked movements stank of desperation. He didn't have _Alaya-Vijnana._ Or if he did, it was only a weak connection.

Marabura's was stronger.

 _Marabura could have gone for the kill a while ago_ , I instantly saw. The flow of the battle. _He's enjoying this, dragging it out before he goes for the kill._ I paused, and glanced upwards. _Showing off to Gjallarhorn, maybe?_

Elsewhere, the battlefield was a rout; the Noachis family's forces were folding in on themselves, trying to retreat as the superior numbers of the Third Division tore into them, the fortress-tank finishing off Neria's remaining mobile workers. Torn-up corpses and burnt-out husks littered the landscape, and the remaining numbers favored the Third. Heavily.

Neria's words flashed through me.

 _It's all my fault._

But I couldn't stop. I would never stop. _Or else it would all be for nothing._

Marabura noticed me as my mobile worker charged for him. He ignored me. A mobile worker couldn't so much as scratch a mobile suit. Even a heavy siege-tank could barely dent one. _But I'm not going to fight him with weapons._

I opened my comms radio, and screamed.

" _Marabura! It's Mikazuki Augus! I'm the one who stole all your money!"_

Barbatos stiffened for a split instant. A strangled voice tore out from the mobile worker's comms-radio, half-feral with shock and rage.

" _You... YOU..."_

" _You won't ever get your money back if you kill me!"_

I flicked the comms-radio as the mobile worker's treads tore over the red sand and gravel. In the rear-view-mirror I could see Neria's forces in full-scale retreat, abandoning their wounded and their dead. _Cowards._ I shifted my attention and screamed. _"Masked guy! Get ready!"_

I punched at the control panel and a rocket-propelled smoke grenade hit Barbatos in the face.

I arced around the flailing Gundam and pulled a lever in the cockpit. A hooked cable shot out and coiled itself underneath the cockpit block, in the hydraulic pipes, angled underneath the forward block of nanolaminated chest-plate. I drove around and around, coiling the cable around Barbatos.

" _GO!"_ I screamed. _"Pin him down! Don't damage the suit!"_

Somehow, against everything; against the complete collapse of the battle, under the burning shadow of the incoming _Grazes—_ the mercenary _understood._

The _Geirail_ charged in and tackled Barbatos. Marabura tripped over the cable wrapped around the Gundam's legs and fell to the ground. The mobile worker jerked and mechanically screamed as the cable was torn to its fraying limits—but the cable held, and Barbatos writhed in the dirt, the _Geirail_ pinning the Gundam down.

Then Marabura rallied. Flailed in desperation. He grabbed at the cable and _pulled._ I disengaged the cable in a split-instant as it arced away, lashing into the air.

It would have been a terrible way to die.

I leapt out of the mobile worker and sprinted for Barbatos.

The mobile worker detonated behind me. Annihilated. I glanced at the fortress-tank for a split-instant, as the flames spread and screaming, smoking men poured out of its hatch.

It had finally fallen. But it had killed _so many._

I kept running.

One of the men pouring out of the tank noticed me. A heavily scarred man I didn't recognize. He raised his rifle, I brought out my pistol—

And half of the man's skull evaporated into a red-purple mist. The corpse fell to the ground.

I couldn't even spare a glance backwards. _Neria._

And then I was there, in the center of chaos.

A shadow fell over me. I set my muscles and my sense and prepared to dodge the arm falling into the earth, instincts _screaming—_

I didn't stop sprinting. I didn't stop moving. But my eyes widened. The arm never came for me. It paused in the air, splayed at a right-angle. Then it started shivering, quaking. It escalated. Barbatos was flailing in the dirt, seizing, tearing at itself; like a man having a heart attack.

 _What the hell?_

Then I was on top of the writhing mobile suit, clambering under the _Geirail's_ smoking and scoured shadow. I climbed under the cockpit block, desperately keeping my grip as the Gundam quaked under me and scratched at its own chest-armor. I tore a panel open and found a small green keypad. _The emergency disengage!_

I pounded in the code and the cockpit door burst open. I could hear _screaming_ coming from inside. Barbatos stopped seizing, and then I was staring down at CGS's President.

He was bleeding from the nose, from both eyes, from his ears. His bloody, insensate gaze fell on me, and he whispered. _"Killed by the museum piece, huh..."_

What the fuck.

I shot him. Twice. In the head. Just to be sure. I reached down and heaved and kicked his fat corpse outside. It bled into the dirt.

The _Grazes_ landed at tri-points around me and the _Geirail_ , bellowing harsh commands, raising their autocannons. I saw Neria's forces surrendering, the Third Division's forces executing the reluctant. In the distance, on the top of the hill, I could see her dark, slender form falling to its knees, crying.

And then I was sitting in the cockpit, Marabura's dark blood staining my clothes red. The mercenary's _Geirail_ stood in a jerky, desperate motion, and turned to face the Gjallarhorn _Grazes_ , raising its light mace high with the one remaining arm. His mobile suit was smoking, oil leaking from the Frame, short an arm and weighed down by shattered armor. The mercenary's mobile suit would collapse within minutes, I could instantly tell. A desperate final stand. A total refusal to surrender in the face of death. One of the bravest soldiers I'd ever seen.

I breathed, closed my eyes, engaged the _Alaya-Vijnana,_ and left the world behind.

* * *

Time passed. Instants. Years. I couldn't tell. A limbo of _not_ -darkness. Indescribable colors and geometries. Always at the edge of my vision, flitting out of sight wherever my vision followed them.

No ground. No sky. A void. Not white, not dark, not grey. All at once, and yet none. It had nothing, yet it reflected everything.

The limbo, deep inside Barbatos. The vague space that I saw at the end of one life and the beginning of another. The place of _disconnection_.

A voice. My own, but deeper, older. Like a reflection distorted in the water; an echo of an original, only barely recognizable. I couldn't make out the words. They were alien, unrecognizable. Mechanical.

 _Barbatos._

" _I'm here!"_ I screamed into the void. _"I'm finally here. Where are you?"_

It wasn't a voice. It was more. It was less. It was this place itself. An impression of a reflection. My own voice, my own thoughts, pouring into me. But not of my own will. Something else. Something more and _greater._

 _..._

 _...with you..._

 _..._

The void disappeared, vanishing like it had never been. I was back in the cockpit, gasping, blood staining my clothes, hearing the bellowing of the _Grazes_ as they engaged to battle.

And then the connection finally activated, like the breaking of a dam, and the fire poured into me.

* * *

I couldn't stop grinning. I just couldn't stop. I could feel it stretch so wide that it had its own pain. The three links surged, and my vision palpitated, seizing in pain as connections reforged and the scattered points were drawn together into a line. My sight. It expanded and became _more._ The limiters shattered, again and again and _again_ until none remained _._ The other senses re-flared, set on fire to towering heights. I became _more_. More than human.

The thoughts, the sensations—they raced and _ignited_ as I left my body of meat behind. The metal, the oil, the pure power—it fit me like a well-worn glove made for me and me alone. It embraced me and brought me home. It was better than anything. Better than sex. I laughed, and laughed, as I realized the truth. What I might have known all along.

I could feel my awareness stretch, the world of my mind's scope _expanding_ , rimmed in red. Perfect synchronicity. Perfect clarity. Without the pain. Without the sacrifice. _I_ was standing there, on the red plain, getting up from the dirt. Looking through eyes that could see to the edge of the horizon, in perfect detail. I _remember this._ It was like when I'd fought and killed the bird. The dimly remembered final battle.

I could see it all. I could hear it all. Time itself moved more slowly. Knowledge and intuition flowed into me.

No more difference. No more divide. I stared down at the world with eyes as far above a human's as the sky was above the earth. I could feel the outline, the map of the world. I knew it as well as I knew my own body. The image was in the back of my mind, perfectly understood, perfectly reflective, projected by the Ahab waves radiating from my chest and coordinated by my other half; an infinite dynamo of pure power.

My fingers clenched around the hilt of the ten-ton battlemace. I stretched, and the red rock shifted and broke under my feet. I trembled, _aching_ in excitement.

I was still laughing. I just couldn't stop. I was so _happy._ Words weren't enough. They would never be enough for this feeling. Language. It could only circle and pry at the outer edges of the truth.

Barbatos. Me. One and the same. The final goal—the final truth of _Alaya-Vijnana,_ made real.

 _You also came back, didn't you? That's why I dreamed of you, isn't it?_

A not-voice echoed through me, thrumming in answer. In agreement. In joy. An inhuman, familiar awareness beyond humanity, stained in my colors. It was like looking into a mirror and seeing myself at my most primal. Everything that made me strong; distilled, purified into the inferno that would burn the world.

The encompassing, short-range omniscience of the Gundam's senses, paid for in blood, with the broken shards of my mind. A perfect synchronicity made permanent through time. A memory. Sacrificing myself in pieces to forge the connection. Forcing myself to be more than I once was by sacrificing myself in pieces.

 _Never again._

It wasn't like it had been, before. Never again. _Never again_ would Barbatos need to take from me, to split my mind apart so that I could _comprehend_ and _react_ at the level of the artificial intelligence buried deep within. The final battle. I'd given everything there was to give, and I hadn't even realized it.

No more would be needed ever again.

I laughed, and laughed.

The enemy mobile suits were _backing away from me_. The radio—the comms were open. They had been all along.

I couldn't bring myself to care.

A fresh start. A second chance to fight. In perfect synch with my other half. The voice screamed through me, a challenge, a determination of perfect will enveloping me as I roared back.

 _WE ARE ONE_

There was only the fire. There was only the fury.

No more politics. No more manipulations. My eyes settled on the three _Grazes._ I started walking. Every step was a victory.

Back where I belonged. _Finally. FINALLY._

I didn't need to try to be a better man. I didn't need to try to be Orga. I didn't need to try to become what I wasn't. Now, I could, _finally_ , embrace what I was born to be.

 _Gundam._

* * *

As I stepped forward I hefted the war-mace, clenching the haft, letting the head drag along the ground.

Baiting them.

" _Come."_

The _Grazes_ visibly hesitated, and then one of them stepped forward in a charge; an overhanded slash of a bladed axe-rifle.

 _So slow._

I took a half-step back; a sidestep, and let the axe crash into the dirt. Rock split and dust erupted into the air.

 _So slow._

I grabbed the _Graze_ by the back of the head and in a savage jerk brought it down to meet my rising knee, bending down and putting all my weight in through the shoulder.

Instincts that weren't mine, yet _were._

Nanolaminated armor shattered. I heard a voice scream over the comms. The _Graze's_ head crumpled and I brought it low with a sweep of my foot.

Before it even finished falling, I turned, took a step back, and brought the war-mace down. The _Graze_ and the weapon met mid-air, like a hammer to a nail.

The _Graze_ hit the land with the force of a meteorite. Cratering into the dirt. The armor shattered.

It writhed at my feet, and I brought my war-mace down and pancaked the head and neck into the ground.

It stopped moving.

Enraged screaming over the comms. I didn't bother listening. _Fight, don't talk, you idiots..._

The two remaining _Grazes_ charged me as one. I hefted the mace, stepped forward, and _threw it_ like a lance with such force that the dusty air split in its wake.

It hit the one on the left like thunder. The hasty parry did nothing. The _Graze_ fell to the ground. Stunned. Cracked.

 _So slow._

The other slashed its sword in a sweeping motion. I flew backwards, firing and manipulating the thrusters. Like a set of muscles I'd been born with. I controlled them as easily as I would a sixth finger, a third arm, _a tail._

This feeling. Pure joy. Instinct and pure knowledge poured into me. I could understand. I could understand _everything._

 _You're as happy as I am? Aren't you, Barbatos?_

The connection surged, flaring in agreement. I grinned like an animal.

I flew in a burst of speed. I flanked the _Graze,_ blocking a poorly balanced desperate retaliation. _You should have run._ I swept its legs out from under it with a low kick. It fell with a crash and a scream. I savagely kicked it in the side of the chest, aiming for the gap between the armor blocks. The cockpit beneath partially crumpled. The _Graze_ stopped moving.

I tore its sword from the ground as the previously stunned _Graze_ rose from the dirt. A scream. An enraged voice. Familiar. Ignored. It fired with its autocannon. I dodged, less running and more _flying_ to the side, strafing, zigzagging until my shadow loomed over the last enemy.

 _SO SLOW._

It slashed out. Tried to beat me back with an axe. _Pointless._ I let the arc pass over my head and chopped the _Graze's_ arm off at the elbow, cutting through armor and Frame both. Brown-red oil sprayed over my chest. I could _feel_ it. The hot fluid.

The connection had never been this strong before.

It was all about the angle and the combination of forces. It was all about which part of the sword's edge met the enemy. _Precision._ Slash with the upper half of the blade at the middle of the arc of the slash, putting all your weight into it; the combination of factors to maximize kinetic force. Aim for the seams in the armor, the thin points that would buckle and split under enough force.

What Barbatos had taught me, so long ago. _Battle-instinct,_ passed down by my other half.

Then I cut off the other arm. I kicked, and it fell to its knees, staring up at me. I could hear a horrified voice over the comms, screaming. A crank?

I cut off the _Graze's_ head.

It crumpled into the dirt, and the connection surged with the thrill of victory.

I stood there for seconds, breathing, coming back to myself.

Remembering the mission.

My clothes were soaked through with sweat, hanging from my thin frame. _That's why you're supposed to take your shirt off before piloting,_ I remembered Orga saying, years and lifetimes ago. _You sweat buckets when using the system. Gotta eat more to keep your weight up._

I picked up one of the fallen autocannons and turned to the Third Division, to the captured soldiers, steadily walking forward.

" _ON YOUR KNEES,"_ I screamed.

They dropped their weapons and followed their orders.

Neria rose, standing. Her hair streamed in the wind, her eyes glittering, and she smiled.

* * *

Earlier in the day, hundreds of kilometers away, far to the southeast of where the climactic battle for Tekkadan would be fought, Baron John Powell was having a devil of a time digging out this _god-damned_ hole.

 _Nine meters_ , and he and his men still weren't done. _Then_ they met with a hideous gray-pink, strangely _frothy_ underlayer. He stared down through the grime-speckled window, scowling at the damned stuff. He tugged at the controls, watching as three and a half tons and nearly nine million _galars_ of alloyed steel scraped across hard-caked dirt with all the gripping potential of a limp dick.

"Hoover!" Powell bellowed over yonder. "You getting a look at this dirt? Never seen anything like it before!"

There was a gust of wind, picking up thick streamers of dust. The geologist's answering call was lost to the wind. He was too busy coordinating the others.

"One more time, Hoover!" He hollered over the inclement wind. The fall storms of the Martian highlands. "The hell is this crap?"

" _It's fused..."_ the distant geologist's voice momentarily trailed off. Too much wind. Too little air. _"...Glassed! The silica grains... partially recombined... molten!"_

"Huh." The old baron cocked his head, staring down through the window. Whatever his site geologist had been saying, he'd picked up the gist of it. Judging from the glossy sheen in the dirt, the crackling sound that vaguely reminded him of cleaning up a heap of broken beer bottles, coming from where the bucket scooper had been ineffectually scraping... yeah. Yeah, he could buy that story.

He leapt down, ignoring the pounding of the wind as he bent down and picked up an errant chip. He willfully ignored the creaking of his limbs. He brought out his necklace—a jeweler's monocle he'd been using since the undergraduate days, generations past. He wielded the monocle loupe with the skill and care of a master. _The hell coulda done this,_ he wondered, staring into the shard's strangely dark facets.

 _Hoover was short-selling this crap,_ Powell realized. _This wasn't molten. It was boiling._

The airy inclusions in the glassed silica were proof enough. The other original components had been entirely cooked off. Nothing was left of the pyroxenes, olivines, and feldspars typically found in the red planet's basaltic, reddish dirt. Nothing left but a dark, fizzy glass and a few errant cinders.

It was glass. The shittiest glass ever seen in all the epochs of the solar system, to be sure, but glass all the same.

 _Could it be natural? Some impact crater?_

No. Not even meteorite strikes could pull off this level of raw temperature. And if they did, the resulting impact would have consequentially and by definition been powerful enough to blast away and disperse any molten detritus. He'd seen enough craters to know. For whatever bizarre reason, the mineral collectors back on Earth simply couldn't get enough of Martian meteorites. They sold well and reliably. He'd sold them by the thousands.

 _No, this isn't natural._

It _sure as hell_ wasn't lava. So that left just the one possibility.

Powell stood, tapping his foot on the ground, staring speculatively at the weirdly fluid _stuff_. He took a moment to re-check the _douser_ —the portable waveform-radiation detector.

 _Right below my feet, huh..._

Half an hour later, after the hard labor of a dozen men, the Cat's bucket scooper was replaced with a hydraulic hammer. Without further ado, old baron set to hammerin'.

The world was strangely muted through the thick protective earmuffs. A disassociation from the world. A separation of the senses, a disconnect between actions seen and volume of ear-pounding _sound_ received. Dust tore at his hard-bitten, craggy face, and the machine's violently rhythmic pounding wore his body out like a wet rag strapped to the back of a raging bull. Errant chips and shards scratched at the Cat's paint, scouring the front grey. _Eh._ He shrugged, noticing the damage. _Paint's cheap._

For twenty minutes he pounded at the bottom of the pit in a typical gridform pattern; the standard system for literally breaking ground. Time passed, and eventually, he cut off the hydraulic hammer's power, setting it to the side.

The first thing he did was chug at a water bottle, sucking at it like a baby would at its mother's tits. The second thing he did was bring out the most powerful tool that any digger could ever have, grinning as he hefted the familiar weight. _My old shovel._ His fingers circled around the shaft and handle. _Still good for a few years._

He signaled the _all clear_ to the men, and they joined him with their own spades, digging at his side. _Can't risk further damage to the goods._

Bending in the dirt and the shattered _not-obsidian_ , he shoveled it all away in small scoops, heaving his wiry muscles with every throw. _I'll bring in the bucket scooper later, clear the debris out and away, after I take a good look for myself, up close and personal._ _Get a better idea of what the hell I'm looking at._

As he dug, his mind drank in the torn-up strata, the strangely onion-like internal layering, and he started to comprehend what he was looking at.

 _Looks like I guessed right,_ he thought, matter-of-fact. _The benefit of decades of experience._

When it came to the nature of rocks, his guesses were, more often than not, uncannily accurate. Often bewildering the geologists in his employ. What those eggheads didn't get was that no amount of education could substitute for actually looking at the rocks. Didn't matter how many fancy degrees you had.

 _It's a rind. A rind of quasi-obsidian, a molten puddle, probably. A crater? The reactor must be in there. Directly below._

He paused. _I should re-check._ He set the shovel aside, and he brought out the Ionian Electromagnetic Dosimeter.

Or what he and his men liked to call the _douser._

The douserhe'd originally brought out to sniff around the teenager's buried mobile suit was an effective piece of work. It had shown him the way. One of a series of dozens, the devices had cost his company top _galar_ and had paid back for themselves a hundred times over, across the years.

Adjustable and customizable radiation detectors. They could sniff out Ahab waves, along with just about anything else that Einstein and Hawking could spit out from their pieholes. With some fine-tuning and trigonometry the little devices could be used to triangulate the source of Ahab Waves, while warning the owner about he liked to call the _uglies—_ the nasty brands of radiation that typically emanated from a cracked reactor. Pulsing waves of neutrons and protons, and _exotics_ , like the dark blood pouring from a shot-out heart, that could cook a man inside out from fifty paces.

Anyone sane stayed far away from those.

Didn't stop the Human Debris and the other scum of the Lawless Territories. _Those people,_ he preferred to shoot on sight if he saw them up to no good. It happened depressingly often. Every few months, steady as a clock, they had to make him go and bring old the old _Jericho._

The douser detected no _uglies_. A re-confirmation of earlier results. He smiled. _A rare find._ An unpillaged, unbroken, pre-war reactor. A _powerful one_ , worth at least a billion _galars._ And all he needed to do was dig it out (surely this was some crater from the war, it couldn't be much deeper) and bring it home.

The teenager's job hadn't taken long. It wasn't a hard job. The mobile suit had been buried in little but caked dust and other sandstorm detritus. He and his sons had finished up a week and a half ago.

The rest of his time since had been spent on this other project, only a few klicks from the other. A nexus of electromagnetic interference, killing the communications for kilometers around. His sons had detected it half a day into digging out the mobile suit, and he'd catalogued it as something worth, eh, _checking out_. And he was beginning to suspect that it, in fact, was. _Very much so._

As it turned out, this dig was _far_ more difficult. More than he and his sons could do on their own. He sent them home, and finally brought in the employees, the teenager client's requested need for secrecy done.

And then they set to digging. And now here he was, in the bottom of a pit nearly a hundred meters across at the lip, staring at what he suspected to be a fortune, mind wandering off topic like the old man he was. But he didn't feel like one. No, not one bit. He chuckled and shook his head, eyes twinkling. No, he felt like a _boy_ , bouncing at the heels; like a hunter standing right on top of Captain Kidd's legendary treasure. The best feeling in the world.

He smiled, and he shook himself out of the idle reverie. _Wish the kids were here for this._

As he dug with the shovel, the hammer-shattered rind of blackened silica grew denser, and ever more black. And then he paused, feeling a strange impact. He gingerly poked about with the shovel, clearing away shards of breccia until he could _see_.

 _Huh. The hell is that thing?_

A silvery cord, at least forty centimeters thick. It had no seam. No blemish or adornment. Spotless. It looked strangely liquid, like something that had been grown, rather than forged in a manufactory.

He poked at it. Was it... pliable?

 _Huh. That's new._

He'd been expecting another mobile suit down in this pit. He was starting to suspect he'd found something truly rare. He ransacked his memories. _Weren't there some old rumors of pre-war Ahab-equipped jet fighters? Ones that could go into low orbit under their own power?_

Those had been built with technologies that were now utterly illegal. Manufactories operated by artificial intelligences, capable of building at levels of precision that no modern facility could match. The designing processes might be illegal, now, but the _products themselves..._ that could be up for debate. He was starting to suspect that the teenager Leo had sent his way, had inadvertently led him to an absolute fortune.

He amended his earlier thoughts. He'd take home the reactor, and whatever _other_ weird nanotechnology was buried down here.

Old ruins were one thing. Those, he knew to stay away from above all else. Battlefield remnants were... something else. The most dangerous thing a salvager ever found in the field was a cracked reactor or a dud bomb. He'd already discerned that this was neither.

This was profit.

...

Time passed, machines heaved, men worked, and the sun eventually began to set. The workday drew to a close, and the men circled the upper ring of the pit. The old baron stared down with them, surveying the product of their work. He could only whistle, as the men chattered excitedly.

"That's there's... one really big mobile suit," he muttered, staring down. He gaze lingered, and he shook his head, amending his thoughts. _No._ _The shape's all wrong. It really is some kind of fighter jet, probably._ "...Whatever it is." He raised his exhausted arm, signaling the _all clear for the day._

The exhausted, exhilarated men all grinned, and cracked open their beers.

"Cheers, everyone!" Powell raised his own frothing bottle with a tired grin. "You'll all get a bonus after I can sell this heaping thing off."

They started cheering. Their good humor buoyed his spirits, gave energy to his sluggish limbs. _Not as young as I used to be._

" _Powell, Powell, Powell!"_

He bellowed out, his voice washing over the combined cheering of twenty good men. "We'll finish this job up and get this thing packed off tomorrow! Still got some digging to do in the morning!"

Minutes later, they were packing their bags and making ready to head back to their camp. The men were excitedly speculating on their bonuses, chittering and jabbering every which way. The old baron was looking forward to seeing his kids tomorrow or the day after, all the while dreading the ride home. It would take over eleven hours to drive back from here, and with this massive thing in tow, it might even be more like twenty. _We really are way out in the boondocks. How the hell did the Augus kid even find out about that suit, anyways?_

Something jarred him out his thoughts.

A hand on his shoulder. He turned, and saw his foreman. A friend. A broad, squat man of solid muscle that had worked with him for over twenty years.

"Oi, Boss." He pointed straight up. "Get a look at that."

...

 _The hell?_

It wasn't a meteorite. That, he could instantly see. Whatever it was, the rate of fall was too slow. Much too slow.

"Any ideas, boss?" The foreman asked, jarring the old baron from his staring. The other men noticed the disturbance, and began to mutter amongst themselves, looking straight up.

"I think we'll find out soon enough," Powell answered, grimly.

Minutes later it became clear, as the construct approached the surface. _A Gjallarhorn mobile suit. An orbital drop. From the Ares base?_

The foreman realized at the same time. Panic lit the men's features, but the foreman stood, grim and steadfast. Disciplined, despite his fear. _Good man._ "Should we run, boss?"

"No." Powell's voice was grim. "We'd never out-run a mobile suit. This calls for... negotiation." He started to walk forward.

The _Graze_ landed maybe a hundred and fifty meters from them, and the earth quaked, dust erupting into the air. It raised an anti-material rifle straight at Powell as a harsh, arrogant voice cut through the wind.

" _NOW THEN, WHAT ARE YOU 'TEKKADAN' RATS DOING HERE?"_

 _Good god he sounds like a smarmy, swirled fuck,_ Powell thought, grimly. _This kind of man enjoys killing._

" _WELL?"_

"We aren't with Tekkadan!" Powell bellowed. _How the hell?_ "We're independent contractors, salvaging on our own business!"

" _YOU DARE TO LIE, OLD MAN?"_ The voice sounded almost... eager. _"I AM ORLIS STENJA, KNIGHT-CAPTAIN OF GJALLARHORN. YOU WILL SUBMIT OR BE DESTROYED."_

Was the ground shaking? He ignored the flash of a thought, and bellowed in answer.

" _MY NAME is John Powell, the Baron of the western Vedra and Maumee Valles frontierlands! My House has been sworn to the Dukes of Armstrong and the Archdukes of Fareed for over three hundred years! You WILL explain yourself, Captain! I have the right of way to do as I please on unclaimed land anywhere in the Mars Sphere!"_

A strangely strangled sound emanated from the _Graze._ A few seconds later the idiot pilot responded, with little of his prior ferocity.

"...PROVE IT."

"Sure." The baron grinned despite himself. _I love pulling rank on these idiots in uniforms._ He brought out his _governor-general -issued_ I.D., emblazoned with the sigil of the Seven Stars and the golden bars announcing his rank in the peerage, emblazoned with his House Sigil – a hammer, a shovel, and a chisel intersecting crosswise on a rust-red background.

Seconds passed.

The anti-material rifle's barrel wavered, and then lowered, in a strangely stiff motion. Seconds later the cockpit opened, and a pale, sweating man emerged, muttering under his breath. The wind carried the something of the words down to the old baron, as a rope bore the pilot down to ground.

" _fucking... Naze... How dare..."_

And then they were standing face to face. The pilot stiffly stood at attention before him, fear in his eyes, then bowed low, his knee to the ground. He couldn't quite manage to keep his tone level, as Powell glowered down at him.

 _At least he's got the formalities down pat._

"My... apologies, Baron Powell. There has been a grave miscommunication in my orders."

Why was the ground shaking? If anything it was getting worse. A shallow earthquake? They weren't so uncommon on Mars; a consequence of terraforming a geologically dead world. The slow collapse or expansion of dry soils as water tables shifted.

"No harm done, Captain." Powell nodded. "You may stand." The pilot smiled gratefully, and rose. "Can you explain how this happened, soldier?"

"Sir." The pilot saluted. "We received information from a... confidential informant that a private-military-company was trespassing and salvaging on government-protected land." The pilot's explanations were hasty, and awkward. "This territory is... currently the subject of a bidding war between the PMC and a concerned party."

Powell frowned. _That makes no sense—no sense at all..._

"If the PMC is bidding on the land against the... how did you put it? _The concerned party?_ " Powell balefully groused the word, arching his brows with all his skepticism. "Wouldn't they have the right to survey the plot they're bidding on?"

"Yes..." the sweating pilot's voice trailed off. "But not to salvage on it..."

 _Someone in my crew's been telling stories, maybe. And I think I know who their paymaster is._

"A technicality, Captain. Normally handled with nothing but a stiff fine. By the Colonial Police forces! You mean to tell me that, on a _technicality,_ you were commanded to do an _orbital insertion of a Gjallarhorn mobile suit?_ " The old baron grinned, despite himself. _"_ Mind explaining that, _Captain?"_

The blonde weasel of a man paused, eyes widening and breath faint.

"You see, ah... it's like so..."

"How much did Teiwaz pay you, Captain?" Powell whispered.

The man flinched, his skin paling. He stepped back involuntarily, a small retreat. Fear.

"You seem to have confused...

"I won't report you, Captain, if you can explain _how—"_

In an instant, the world changed.

* * *

The earth cracked. The sky split. Shattered rock tumbled through the air.

Powell's men were driven to their knees by the quake, falling to their knees or asses and bleeding from errant shrapnel as something exploded—no, _erupted—_ from the pit. The few who kept to their feet stared down, slack-jawed; before they ran, screaming.

A voltaic _scream._ A discordant roar of pure power let forth like the breaking an Archean god. He had a moment to see a _thing,_ an indescribable _monster_ rising from the pit before it let forth an ultraviolet-white beam of power that melted the earth itself. A cloud of superheated steam erupted forth and flash-boiled the men alive. Droplets and streamers of molten silica fell through the steaming air like rain.

 _By God—_

He and the idiot Captain had a single moment. A single shared moment, locked eye to eye. He could see his death-fear reflected in the other man's eyes. The eternal moment of two men who knew that they were about to die.

Then the Captain fled. It wasn't a run. It was an animal _sprint._ A reversion to the reptile brain. Like all the hounds of a pagan's gibbering dreams of hell were chasing him back to his mobile suit. He loped, shambled, tumbled, until he got on the rope and started climbing upwards, and then—

The cable. A low, mechanical, ululating whistle of a sound as it tore through the air.

The pilot fell to the ground in shorn pieces. The two-and-a-half-meter blade at the end of the silvery cable buried itself halfway through the _Graze,_ cutting through nanolaminated armor like a butcher's cleaver to a chicken. The cable tugged and came free in a spray of blood and oil, disappearing back in the cloud of steam.

John Powell fell to his knees, staring. A moment of roaring silence.

The sky split once more, so much worse than before. A voltaic roar of power. Inhumanly discordant. He seized, screaming. Blood poured from his ears, his body vibrating and tearing. And then he couldn't hear anything at all. Coppery blood filled his mouth, his lungs.

A second wave of steam, erupting, lit from within by a ghastly ultraviolet light. Like something from the frozen pits of the ninth hell. The blackened Stygian pits of Tartarus. Thoughts failed him. Words failed him. He looked upon death itself.

Fountains of yellow-white molten silica streamed through the air. The violet-white beam of power stretched on and _on_ , burning into the ground. Burning away the steam itself. Burning the air. One massive claw-foot came free in an eruption of white magma. Then the other. The _thing_ shook itself like a wet dog and molten glass poured from it in yellow-white rivers, so bright his eyes burned in their sockets just looking at them.

But he couldn't stop staring.

His men had been burnt to dried, boiled cinders by mere proximity. Exsiccated. The land itself near them was half-molten, glowing a ruddy red.

It smelled of blackened pork, the scent overwhelmed by the elemental sting of ozone. He coughed blood.

Then it emerged. It _emerged,_ and stared at him, without having eyes, towering in the sky.

Then it walked.

And kept walking.

It walked past him.

It stood over the mobile suit and began tearing into it. Dismantling it. Ripping it limb from limb and setting the pieces aside in careful intervals, sectioning away certain pieces with expert cuts of the cable-blade. It seemed to value the oil, picking up pieces of the _Graze's_ frame and squeezing them like a man would a wet rag, pouring the precious fluids into the waiting mouth of a horseshoe-crab-shaped _thing_ the size of a minivan obediently sitting at its heel.

His horrified, dead gaze pivoted in jerky motions. There were more of the _things_ , dozens, hundreds of them pouring forth from the pit. They made for the abandoned vehicles and began disassembling them, carving out batteries and valuable components with long body-saws and eight-fingered mechanical hands, gently sucking out any liquids waiting within, through long grey straws.

His gaze turned.

One of them was sitting right in front of him.

A device. A mechanical proboscis emerged from the shadow underneath the hard, gunmetal-black exoskeleton. It scanned him, energy pulsating. It settled on his right pocket, and in a strangely gentle motion, a _not-hand_ —it had too many fingers, too many joints— came forth and plucked his phone from his pocket.

It examined the small device for a time, and it withdrew into the shadows underneath the exoskeleton.

Then the _thing_ jerked, and stabbed him through the heart. He gasped and tumbled to the side, body limp. Broken.

The pain brought him a final moment of sanity. A final darkening thought. Images flashed through him, with the force of a prophecy. A sudden vision of his three beautiful children. His wife, dead for so many years. The home they'd built together, the lives built, the lands and innocents protected.

He dreamed of his children.

Clay. Kenneth. Merelia.

 _Live. Please. Live and be strong. Be happy—_

His final sight was a dark blade, coming for his temple.

* * *

 _Gjallarhorn Top Secret (Black, Archduke) Archives Index Entry #17902 (A.K.R.A. #19)_

 _Historical archives note:_

 _The United States in pre-disaster time was a nation in decline, its institutions captured by special interests, its political system polarized into paralysis by political bickering and corruption. The collapse of NATO due to the withdrawal of allied nations and the erosion of the petrodollar system led to international isolation, national economic depression, and widespread civil unrest. Following strategic setbacks in the China-United States Pacific War, this process of decline culminated in the battle of Anchorage in spring 2101, when former ally Canada allied with Russia to take Alaska, thus cutting off American access to highly desired Arctic mineral resources and shipping lanes. The U.S. was unable and unwilling to contest the invasion, due to military losses in other theatres and pervasive corruption, via foreign money, of the political leadership._

 _In the aftermath, the Joint Chiefs of Staff orchestrated a coup d'etat. The week following is now remembered as the Hour of the Eagle, or in other circles, the Watering of the Tree of Liberty. Several thousand persons, across all three legislative branches, and in the public and private spheres, were found guilty of corruption and treason, including two Supreme Court Justices, thirty-four senators, two hundred and twelve congressmen, and most of the White House staff. The trials concluded with the convictions of several Cabinet members, and the President and Vice President. All were escorted to the forests of Lexington, Maryland, and were hung from the neck until dead on July 4, 2101. Tens of thousands of lesser offenders were imprisoned for varying durations, and thousands of foreign nationals were deported during the events of the Hour._

 _Afterwards followed the Month of Reform, a brief period of totalitarian rule under the stewardship of a military council led by the Joint Chiefs, during which continued lesser purges at the local, state, and corporate levels. This period also saw the reform of the most critical laws and practices undermining the function of the political system._

 _At the end of this period the Second Constitutional Convention was called, resulting in several Amendments, and the concentration of political power into the Executive Branch. Semi-authoritarian reforms were enacted, and the overall political system moved significantly to the right; the determination was made, throughout the public and private spheres, to avenge the nation's losses and regain prior prestige. At any price._

 _This led to the creation of D.A.R.P.A. Program 192783, a project exploring – The Militarization of Fully Autonomous Top-Down Artificial Cortex-Ghost Intelligences, colloquially called "Manhattan Two," under project leaders Krishna S. Alaya and Narendra M. Vijnana, the nation's two highest authorities in brain-computer interface technologies. The project was formerly classified per the rules of United States Pentagon Executive-Privileged Classification Code-Level Vantablack, now classified per Gjallarhorn Secret Law #001, #002 – classification level Archduke._

 _This A.K.R.A. Index Entry also discloses the following partner programs which were later merged into D.A.R.P.A. Program 192783. Gjallarhorn Secret Law Protocols remain in effect._

 _D.A.R.P.A. Program 30917, a project exploring—The Tactical Deployment of Anti-ICBM-type Particle Beam Weapons—Strategic Defense Initiative Code Name STAR WARS, project lead Maiman Hughes._

 _The UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory and partner entity QINETIQ Top Secret Defense Research Programme #1301—Self-Contained Nanofabricating von Neumann-Type Technologies, project lead E.V. Yudowski._

 _The Israeli Ministry of Defense Secret Defense Project code-level Abraham, Expanded Designation Solomon's Greater Key, in partnership with the Israeli Space Agency (I.S.A),_ _National Aeronautics and Space Administration (N.A.S.A.), and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (D.A.R.P.A) – at Remote Black Site Bannus (and subsidiary Orbiting Manufactory Station Ne'eman) Jupiter Orbit, Ganymede, Epigeus Crater;_ _completed D.A.R.P.A. Programs 20071, 20183; respectively—The Production and Miniaturization of Vacuum-Energy Ahab-Type Omni-Particle Generators, and; Ahab-Type Particle Resonance of Radiant-Energy Resistant Phyllosilicate-Biotite-Type Nanolaminated Armors._

 _These technologies together led to the production of the first Mobile fully-Autonomous Remote Mass-self-maintained Objective-oriented Reaver – CODE NAME Mobile ARMOR, Designation Code 001, individual designation Malakh. It would be the first of twenty-eight in the primary series, with various attempts by other organizations to replicate the technology after unveiling. None succeeded in full. See A.K.R.A. #17 through #39 (the Nanotechnology Wars, the Gundam War, the War of the Seven Dukes, etc) for details._

 _The ARMORS saw pervasive success in their fields of deployment for a period of roughly ten months prior to their rampancy following the Norilsk Incident._

 _Nineteen years later, Malakh – the first and last of the ARMORS – was destroyed by Gundam Valefor and pilot Aaronat Elion in the far substratum of Luna via self-sacrificial antimatter detonation. The ARMOR had deceptively staged its own destruction two years prior at Belt Colony Vesta, and subsequently attacked an orbiting black-site Ahab Reactor manufactory. The manufactory's core components were incorporated into the ARMOR's outer frame and were critical in the incorporation and metamorphosis of Earth satellite Luna into a supra-outer ARMOR Frame._

 _The partial destruction of Luna resulted in the Moonfall catastrophe. Knowledge of the manner of Elion's death has been erased from the public record as per informal protocols that would later be incorporated into the Kvasir Proclomation, which details Gjallarhorn Secret Law #03, prohibiting all research into the generation and/or weaponization of antimatter, and all public knowledge of the true cause of the Moonfall._

* * *

 **Author's note:**

Well. It has finally happened. Even I was getting impatient in the buildup. It's time for, as John Kenneth Galbraith himself put it... the man, the god...

...

It's time for the shit to hit the fan.

ALSO; don't browse over the A.K.R.A. entry. Read and re-read it carefully.


	10. Orga Interlude 1: Lock and load

I don't own Iron Blooded Orphans

* * *

"What should I do, Orga?"

The night air was heavy and dark. The Third Division's commander was running on a diet of caffeine and raw nerves, staring down at the auburn-haired, green eyed boy.

Deciding the place where he might die.

 _Do I keep him away from danger, or do I use him? Do I bring in the younger soldiers? Should I?_

He hated putting the younger troops in danger. _But can I really afford not to use them? Would they really thank me for protecting them? We'll need every single gun we can get..._

 _..._

 _...and_ _should_ _I protect them, any more than anyone else? Younger, older... does it change that we're all soldiers?_

"Dante," Orga groused, turning to the Third Division contractor's self-trained specialist in electronic warfare. The red striping on the side of his flak jacket marked him as a Human Debris contract-soldier. "Go with him. Get the eastern armory open. Near the younger group. One rifle and three clips to every single one of them."

 _Eighty-two,_ Orga remembered. _Eighty-two of us are younger than thirteen. Even with nearly two hundred others I can't protect them all._

As Ride and Takaki's eyes widened in sudden unexpected joy, Dante hesitated, shooting his boss a hard look. One he rarely saw from the bloody-haired teenager. Orga didn't need to hear Dante's words to know what he was saying, as the ecstatic pre-teens celebrated. _Are you sure, Orga? They might be thanking you now, and you might be burying them in a few hours._

Orga's eyes hardened, and Dante's widened. _We can't spare anyone tonight, Dante,_ Orga didn't say.

Moments later they were gone.

Orga turned to Biscuit, as the overweight boy, Eugene, and Shino joined him in the abandoned breakroom. All three looked pale and irritable. _Not enough sleep._ In the grimy room's dim light, they all looked like shit.

Except for the other two, of course. Atra was sitting in a corner, working on _something_ , and Akihiro was piling into a plate of hastily fried bacon and eggs and coffee, looking for all the world like he was ready to fight a war.

 _Akihiro's been pissed off, ever since he got that letter from Mika. Why?_

Orga turned to Biscuit. "Is it done?"

"Yeah," Biscuit nodded. "The packages are set. Mikazuki can activate them with that code."

"Good job." Orga breathed, heaving a sigh. _Two problems down. Twenty thousand more to go..._

Biscuit swallowed as he questioned. "The code. Do you have any idea what it means?"

"No," Orga shrugged. "Something he made up."

"Boss," Eugene leaned against the drywall, frowning over a set of folded arms. "Not all of us are happy about this. We all knew we had to eventually do something about the upper ranks, but to act _now?_ It'd be one thing if Mikazuki was here himself, but as it is, all we've got to go on is that one letter. We don't even know if it was _him_ that wrote it. None of us knew he could even read. There's a _lot_ we don't know about this situation."

"It's a bit late for that, Eugene," Orga frowned. _He's not wrong._ "But it was Mika, all right."

 _Tekkadan._ Orga had been musing over the word for hours. _The iron flower that never dies. How did he know?_

"Yeah." Akihiro's grim, gravel-like voice emanated from the far end of the break-room's table. He glanced at Eugene with a narrowing of his eyes. Muscles clenching under his clothes like bridge-cables, he looked like he'd been carved out of a rock. "Mikazuki sent them. Don't doubt it."

"Fine, fine, boss." Eugene frowned under the pressure. "When should we hit?"

"Marabura and Haeda are gonna leave before breakfast," Orga responded. "That limits our options. Mika will have to deal with them, somehow. There'll still be two hundred or so members of First on-base. Maybe a hundred and twenty that can fight." He turned back to Biscuit. "Oi, how much sedative we still got?"

"Enough for forty, forty-five at most," Biscuit said.

"Not enough." Orga _tsked_ , riffling his hand through his hair. "Make sure the officer's table gets it. Concentrate the dose if you have to. Just make sure the officers are out of action."

"The sedatives have to be taken in liquid form, Orga." Biscuit reminded him.

"Crap." Orga scowled. He turned to Atra. "Oi, Atra. You got any ideas?"

"Um!" She leapt to her feet. Orga glanced at the thing in her hand. _Is she... knitting something?_ He stared. _Huh?_ "You can try serving porridge but they won't like that at all."

"Like I give a damn what they like," Orga groused, scuffing at the floor with his boot. "Arrange for _something_ to happen to the eggs and throw in all the leftover sugar, if that's what it takes to get them to eat that slop."

Atra flinched for a moment, before nodding and walking away hurriedly. _She's always been skittish around me,_ Orga mused, glancing at her small, retreating back _. Why? She follows Mika wherever he goes, and he's got ten times my kills._

"Oi, Atra." Orga called. She hesitantly turned back to him. "Thanks for helping us. But, by the time it's breakfast tomorrow, don't stick around." Orga muttered. "You won't want to be here."

She smiled at him, sadly. "I know, Orga."

He tsked internally as she left the room. _I don't understand girls._

"Biscuit," Orga groused, finishing his coffee off. "About the explosives. Who knows?"

"The explosives Mikazuki asked for?" Biscuit nodded as he chugged at his own cup. "Yeah; Shino and Tamaki helped. Eugene told a few of the lieutenants." He paused. "The ones we know will keep quiet. We can't expect to keep everyone on after we take over."

 _Yeah._ Orga already knew that. _How many deserters will we have, by this time tomorrow..._

"You manage to steal the master key to the mobile workers?" Orga asked.

"Yeah," Biscuit nodded, smiling. "We've got it, all right."

 _What's the damn time?_ "Good." Orga muttered, glancing at the clock on the wall. _1:12 A.M._

"Fuck." Orga grimaced at the sight.

"What's up, Boss?" Eugene was leaning against the near wall, sipping at his own fresh cup. _Can't believe he takes it black._

"I just hate all-nighters, Eugene." Orga grumbled. "It's going to be a long, shitty, shitty night."

"Like that isn't obvious." Eugene sipped at his cup, scowling at the taste. "We'll rest after we've got the base under control. It won't take long. We've got the numbers." Eugene looked at him with something almost approaching pity. "It's what comes after that worries me. Your own job is going to suck a lot more. It's just the dregs of First that are still on the base."

"Yeah," Orga muttered. He turned to the leader of the Human Debris. "Akihiro."

The muscle-bound boulder of a young man responded only with a side-glance of his eyes.

"You've got two sets of orders. First, I want you to get your muscle squad together." Akihiro frowned for a heartbeat, as Orga continued. "Heavy weapons. Be ready to go in twenty minutes with the rest of us. Bring Dante, too." Orga breathed, and his eyes tightened.

"Next, after we're done with tonight's job, head up and out to the Hakafune spaceport with Chad and Dante. Ignore everything else. You can borrow my expense card. I'll find you an I.D. that'll get you in there once we finish up. I want you to go up there and link up with the rest of the contractors in orbit and make sure the Will o' the Wisp doesn't get stolen tomorrow."

"Got it," Akihiro grumbled. His expression was dark, his eyes... elsewhere.

 _His body's here, but he isn't._

"What's eating at you, Akihiro?"

Akihiro shook his head, not quite glowering. His immense muscles were taut beneath his flak-jacket. "Mikazuki found out something. Something I need to check on. I'm not staying up in Hakafune for long. I need to come back down and talk to him, as soon as tomorrow's job is done."

 _The hell?_

"Sure," Orga said.

Akihiro glanced to him through a single narrowed eye. The granite-like muscles of his shoulders clenched taut under his flak-jacket. "I wasn't asking." After a moment, he returned to laying siege on his plate of food.

Orga shook his head for a moment.

"Eugene, Biscuit." Orga nodded to his deputy commanders. "You two stay behind. Secure the base after the Third Division convoy leaves. I'm taking Shino and Akihiro, with a few of the platoons."

"You'll leave us to take the base by ourselves?" Eugene frowned, Biscuit mirroring the expression.

"You'll have most of the troops." Orga grinned. "Think you guys aren't up for the job?"

"Fine, fine." Eugene grumbled. "Me and Biscuit should be fine." Eugene nodded to the shorter, stocky boy. "Like I said earlier, the parts of First left on base will be the dregs. We can handle 'em."

Biscuit spoke up. "We'll do it, Orga. Where are you and the others going? To Mikazuki?"

"No." Orga smirked, showing teeth. "The city. We've got a hostile takeover on the schedule."

* * *

 **4:25 AM**

Orga and Shino met the aristocrat just outside of Chryse.

"Heh." Shino grinned, staring down the dark road. Looking at what was waiting for them. "Mikazuki really came through, didn't he?"

 _No shit, Shino._

Just down the road from them, in an abandoned train station's parking lot, there were at least a hundred men. Parked in some great circle, just below a dark hill.

Two factions. Blue, and green. Maybe twenty men in white uniforms, trimmed in blue; eighty in white uniforms, trimmed in green.

Waiting for them.

Behind Orga and Shino followed ninety-odd troops, in a set of four spare infantry trucks. _We're all Tekkadan now, I suppose,_ Orga mused. _I like it, Mika. I like it._

A severe man in a pressed blue uniform stepped up to Orga's window. He wore the epaulets of a captain.

"Orga Itsuka?"

 _A House Soldier,_ Orga realized, staring at the insignia on his uniform. _A Captain._

The elite, thoroughly trained military units that only _citizens_ could join, directly defending the Sphere's true masters.

 _How the hell did Mika get in with the aristocrats?_

"Yeah." Orga grinned. "Guilty as charged."

"Follow me," the man said, nodding to him and Shino. "Tell your men to park off that way. I will bring you to the master."

Orga and Shino were escorted to the center of the ring of vehicles, illuminated by temporary lamps. Orga looked at the man waiting for them. Pale, dark-haired, dark-eyed. Handsome. _He's younger than I expected,_ Orga thought. _He can't even be thirty yet._

The man offered a well-manicured hand. "Orga Itsuka, I presume?" Orga nodded. "I am Taniel Noachis, heir to the Hellas duchy."

Orga stared at the hand for a moment before remembering himself. "Yeah," he said, shaking. _Remember, aristocrats. It's all about protocol with them. Manners._

"Mikazuki Augus had only the best to say about you," the man gave Orga a thin smile. "I hope you can match up to his recommendation." He turned to Shino. "The same goes for his friends."

"Heh." Orga smirked. His clench on the other man's hand tightened. "We're Tekkadan. Don't underestimate us. We'll deliver."

Shino piped up, grinning. "Yeah. We'll get done what needs getting done."

"Good." The man's smile tightened. "There is too much at stake to permit failure." The aristocrat turned to a figure in the shadows. "Orga Itsuka, meet Ulysses Xanthe, the Duke of the Xanthe Terra."

Orga nearly gaped. _A fucking Duke?_

A short, doughty figure with a crag-like face and a trimmed salt-and-pepper beard stepped forth, glowering at Noachis. He barely spared a glance for Orga and Shino. He groused up at the other aristocrat. "Taniel, you brought me and my personal guard all the way here at this _godforsaken time of night_ for a pack of _brats?"_

Orga's fist clenched, hidden in his flak jacket's pocket.

"No." The dark-haired, younger aristocrat smiled down on the older. "Soldiers." His expression flickered. "Ulysses, we've already made an accord. To work together in shaping the path of independence, to see that the path taken serves our purposes, in the end."

 _"Soldiers,"_ Duke Xanthe muttered, glancing at Orga, a dismissive flash that seemed to weigh and measure his value in a split-heartbeat, and find it wanting. "These are _kids_. Useless to us. We can do better." He sighed, scratching at his beard. Noachis glanced to Orga apologetically. "I agree with the general gist of your argument, Taniel; it wouldn't have been wise to work directly with Red Line or one of the other PMCs, they can't be trusted to hold the line; but we don't need _brats_. I've been advocating all along that we should set up a professional military; combine the peerage's House Forces from baron on up, set up a central command and move in when Gjallarhorn pulls out."

Orga's expression twisted, his lips thinning. On any other day, on _any other day at all_ —he would have ignored the jibes. But, at this juncture, _now...?_

 _I didn't come out here to be insulted. Not tonight._

"A fine idea, Ulysses," Noachis nodded, "but it always circles back to the crucial two questions. Which House will have command? And who will pay, in the years and generations down the road?" He nodded to Orga. "This is how I say we'll move forward."

Duke Xanthe glanced at Orga for a scarce moment longer. "Why _these_ brats?"

Noachis gave the older Duke a level stare. "Every single member of the CGS Third Division has undergone the _Alaya-Vijnana_ procedure, Ulysses."

The man visibly shuddered, glancing to Orga and Shino for a longer moment. "The things we do for results..." he whispered, before nodding. "Better them than my own men, I agree. I wouldn't wish that archaic barbarity on my worst enemy. What of their battle record?"

"Impeccable, of course," said Noachis. "Possibly the finest battle record over the last year of any military contractor in the Sphere."

"Good." The Duke nodded. "They'll make for acceptable fodder."

Noachis, slowly, nodded.

Orga's features twisted.

 _Not by aristocrats. Not by anyone._

"Grand ambitions require money," Noachis observed. "We already spend enough on our own forces."

"Most of our peers would rather sell their mothers than take a tax hike." The Duke grumbled in agreement. "And we fight for our privileges like dogs would a bone. But, we don't need to settle for a federation, or a confederacy, Taniel. We should be trying to unite the Sphere into a single nation. Our forces can lead by example, force the others into line. Combine the Economic Federation colonies under one banner—our banner. Get the Human Debris trade under control and tax it properly. Maybe even give a few to your pet project." He glanced to Orga; a dismissive flash. "They'd be in good company. Trash begets trash."

 _Not while my friends are fighting those Third bastards._

"Regarding unification, many dreamers of the past four centuries have aspired for it." Noachis smiled sadly. "Maybe it will happen, someday. But not in our generation. No one House or other faction is dominant enough to succeed. And, I agree, we can bring the bureaucracies of the Colonial Administrations under control after Gjallarhorn pulls out, but _should_ we? If we made such a power play we could well be fighting a new war amongst ourselves within a few years. If we take that step, one of us may make a play to become a King. I'd prefer not to walk down that road. The status quo has been kind to us."

 _At this VERY SECOND Biscuit and Eugene and all the others might be fighting for their lives and these aristocrats think they can just ignore us like ants, fit us into their plans like so many little gears...?_

Next to him, Shino tensed. The gangly, handsome teenager's good humor had long since evaporated.

"I'm willing to try, Taniel." The Duke of Xanthe glowered up at the taller man. "We can increase taxes on those not in the peerage once Gjallarhorn departs. Declare a confederation of the duchies. We'll just have to curtail the Federation bureaucracies and prevent them from wielding hard power. If we emasculate them, the Sphere is ours. There are a dozen sufficiently strong PMCs in the Sphere we can work with, if need be. We can buy out their leadership, combine the forces under our lead, _force_ the bureaucracies to submit and be incorporated into the duchies. The other dukes will follow our lead once they see the prospect of spoils."

"A worthy idea." Noachis seemed to consider it. "But, again, I believe the balance of the status quo is acceptable. However, there may be some merit in using the other mercenary companies. We cannot let the democrats carry the day. If we brought the mercenaries upon the government centers, particularly Arbrau... we should be..."

The world faded around him, and Orga looked on, staring. _What the hell are you getting us into, Mika?_

 _..._

 _Enough._ He _tsked_ internally while the other men debated. _Take the damn initiative. That's why you're the leader._

"So, if I'm getting this right," Orga took a step forward, trying to control his expression. Trying to control his fury. "You aristocrats want to outsource your own defense?"

"Not exactly, Orga Itsuka." Noachis turned to him, smiling.

The Duke, on the other hand, seemed to have forgotten about him. _I'll have to change that._

"But, close. The Martian Duchies already see to our own defense, by and large. We are... satisfied with the defense status quo, for the most part. We simply want an organization that can step in to the void Gjallarhorn will leave; to defend our routes where our own forces may be stretched thin, or out-gunned. To defend our interests, in the Lawless Territories, or in our home cities, if need be."

"To make sure the planet doesn't go democratic on us," the older Duke grumbled.

 _Like I give a damn what kind of government the Sphere has._ "You want us to replace Gjallarhorn?" Orga clarified. _But I won't deploy anyone against civilians. Ever._

 _..._

 _Seriously, Mika?_

"Yes." Noachis nodded, while the Duke scowled. "Their local arm has been weakening under budget cuts for decades. They only have twenty-five or so mobile suits remaining on the planet, and a few thousand soldiers. Two capital ships docked in Phobos." Noachis shook his head, as though remembering an unpleasant detail, and continued.

"This all discounts their arm in Tharsis, which operates in a different chain of command. That aside, their orbital command and Surface Bases represent a larger expense than any one or two duchies would be willing to put forth, but would be within the range of possibility for a sufficiently strong military contractor. Gjallarhorn's total presence on Mars right now is only slightly greater than the rumored strength of the Dawn Horizon pirates, truth be told."

"Even before these budget cuts, Gjallarhorn was unreliable." Duke Xanthe muttered, mostly to Noachis. "We paid far more in taxes than we got back in security. The past six commanders of the _Ares_ station have all been posted from the Earth Sphere; glorified exiles, at that. A Martian hasn't commanded in generations. They _look down on our sons_ when they enlist. We may hold title in the peerage, but we're considered unimportant provincials in the political high command. None of the Seven Stars have visited in several years. It's a disgrace. Then they _dare_ to assume that we'll let Arbrau and the other colonial Federation governments take over after they leave?"

Orga's voice was hard. "How do the other PMCs fit in? Especially the frontier ones?"

Duke Xanthe stepped forward, fully adrressing Orga for the first time. "We'll organize and recall them. If Gjallarhorn is pulling out we'll have to bring them closer to the cities. You would be among them, I suppose."

Orga smiled. He couldn't help it. Idiots and children were just so _funny,_ sometimes. _He has no idea what he's talking about. If he does, he's a monster._

"Why us?" Orga asked.

"The _Alaya— "_

"No." Orga interrupted, shaking his head. "The whiskers don't make someone a better soldier. You can't implant loyalty, or discipline. Or honor." He stepped forward, again. "I'll ask again. _Why us?"_

He already knew. _We're strong. And, to them? We're expendable._

Noachis considered Orga for a time, crossing his hands behind his back while he carefully picked his words. He locked his narrowed eyes with Orga's.

 _I'm being too aggressive with them, aren't I?_

 _..._

 _Tough shit, bastards._

"Your... representative, and leader, Mikazuki Augus, thoroughly impressed a friend of mine, and myself. We believe this project is within the range of his skill."

Orga blinked.

 _Hold on, hold on. What's this about Mika being leader?_ Orga considered the thought for a moment, then gave the mental equivalent of a casual shrug. A wild grin.

A challenge.

 _I guess it would look that way from the outside, wouldn't it?_

 _..._

He didn't let himself grin like an animal. But he wanted to.

No matter how angry he was.

 _I'll have to do something about that 'leader' idea of theirs. It would be a problem if my best buddy looked cooler than me, wouldn't it?_

Noachis continued, his hands clasped behind his back.

"But that's all in the future. Gjallarhorn won't disappear so quickly. We expect to have at least a year, and potentially as many as three, before the organization withdraws its military arm from the Sphere. We expect they'll maintain a presence in Tharsis. This all is contingent on the Federation elections on Earth next year, which we expect to heavily favor the isolationist factions. Right now, we are..." Noachis smirked. "Planning ahead, shall we say."

"You realize that we're all space rats?" Orga said, clarifying. "Human Debris, even."

 _We're so far below men like you, you wouldn't even want to be seen near us in public,_ Orga didn't say.

The older duke was the first to speak. He addressed Orga with obvious reluctance and distaste, his lip curling.

"The tiered citizenship system is a law of the land we wish to preserve, Orga Itsuka." The man scratched at his salt-and-pepper beard, peering at Orga through narrowed eyes. "After the failures of Old Earth, we in the aristocracy have little interest in restoring democracy. You need only speak to the average man to know that the average man has no place in politics." The man paused for a moment, considering his words carefully, then continued.

 _This guy doesn't even see us as people. Ants, maybe. He doesn't think I understand a word he's saying._

 _..._

 _He thinks I'll bark like a dog for some money._

"However, not all nobles are, automatically, supporters of slavery. In truth, the greatest supporters of the slave trades are petty nobility and non-noble landowners, whose only assets are land and laborers, whereas the cash-rich high nobility are generally neutral or slightly leaning pro-abolition. _However_ , in order to wield power and influence, they need the support of their vassals. _We_ ," Duke Xanthe indicated Noachis "require the loyalty of our barons, just as _they_ require the loyalty of their own men."

"What does that mean for us?" Orga asked.

Noachis was the one to respond.

"We will consider granting citizenship to you and your men, and granting your commanders a place in the peerage. _If_ you can measure up to our hopes."

Duke Xanthe glared at the younger man. "Hold on, Taniel. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. There's an entire road between here, and there. And to let people who've been _modified_ become citizens, let alone _peers,_ is—"

Orga's hands clenched in the pockets of his jacket. Thoughts flashed through him. The sounds around—the bickering of the aristocrats, the tensing of Shino next to him, the dull clamor of men loading up their weapons—it all drowned to a dull clamor.

Orga thought. He thought about what to do.

 _Is this really the way forward, Mika? To become the attack dog of the aristocrats?_

But this was beyond anything he'd ever expected. Citizenship for _Tekkadan's_ soldiers... they could all start real families. Be able to own land of their own, instead of just renting from nobles. Go to good schools. Get better, _real,_ jobs. They could vote. They could become anything they wanted to be.

 _We can be human._

Why didn't it feel like the victory it was? Why? _WHY?_

 _...Because we'll be doing the oppressing for them, won't we? Picking up where Gjallarhorn leaves off? Remember? They're 'outsourcing.' Remember how the Duke responded when Noachis mentioned Alaya-Vijnana. They want us to do the things they don't want to. Make the sacrifices they don't want to pay._

 _..._

 _—BUT, can I really say no? Do I really give a fuck about the politics? I'm doing this for my guys. For my friends. For Tekkadan._

Orga sent Shino a _look,_ and his infantry commander's expression tightened in sudden comprehension. The brown-haired, gangly boy retreated into the shadows.

"We can control them, Ulysses. In the end, all men _want to be led_ , and led well— "

"Duke Xanthe," Orga interrupted, riffling his fingers through his hair, glaring through one narrowed eye.

 _But if we do this, Mika, it'll be on our terms._

 _Not theirs._

"What is it, Orga Itsuka?" the Duke grumbled at being interrupted with his debate. Noachis turned to Orga, curiosity writ on his features.

"On the battlefield, your blood would be just as red as anyone else's." Orga smirked, without any kindness. "That's how you aristocrats got your ranks in the first place, isn't it?"

The Duke's teeth clenched. "What are you talking about— "

—And Orga's grin widened, showing the incisors of his teeth. Noachis shook his head, _warning_ Orga with his eyes. _Don't do it—_

Orga grinned in wild defiance, like the lowborn trash he was.

"Your great-great-great grandfather or _whoever_ was the first Duke of Xanthe just happened to kill enough people that the government gave him a title. That's how it works, right? Becoming an aristocrat? All you've got to do is kill enough other _important_ people, and then you and your kids get to be called nobles. Get to pretend that they're better than anyone else, just because of who their dad was. All the while, the rest of us get to live like shit, dying in the dirt."

The Duke's expression reddened, expression verging on the apoplectic. "I can have you _shot_ — "

"Luck."

—Orga whispered, with a low chuckle and a cold cast to his eyes.

"That's all it comes down to, in the end. Luck." Orga glared through one eye, the Duke made speechless, his armed personal guard tensing where they stood.

"Whatever your ancestor did, he couldn't have done it without his comrades. His allies. His friends. But where are _their_ fancy titles, I wonder? All you have is a rank that any of a hundred other soldiers might've gotten in your ancestor's place, if their _luck_ had been just a little different. A bit less luck, a different set of circumstances, maybe a bit less skill, from your _ancestor..._ that's the one difference between you and me, isn't it? What have _you_ done, to earn being a duke? To earn your title?" Orga looked him in the eye, and grinned. "Are you really so much better than the rest of us trash, just because of the _name you were born with?"_

The aristocrat's face was reddening in fury, and Noachis' eyes were widening in horror—

 _Mika, this happens on my terms, or not at all. These bastards need us more than we need them._

"Men!" The Duke roared. "To arms!"

"Tekkadan!" Orga bellowed. "Lock and load!"

And then the eighty-odd men in green-trimmed uniforms were leveling their guns at Orga's fifty or so teenaged soldiers. Safeties flicked back, bolts cocked back, black rifles aimed for brown ones, fingers clenched, eyes tightened, and the parking-lot instantly was made silent.

Noachis stared on, horror writ through his features. He whispered—no, _hissed_ at Orga; _"What are you doing— "_

"Surrender, Itsuka, you mad _boy._ " Duke Xanthe glared at him, a vein at the edge of his flushed temple palpitating. "You're out-manned and out-gunned. Perhaps I will be merciful. After a _stern_ disciplining." He turned to Noachis, scowling. "What a waste of my ti—"

"I agree with some of that," said Orga, his eyes narrowed to pinpricks. "It's time for a surrender." He glared at the two aristocrats, his expression twisting. " _Yours._ You two seem to have confused the kind of conversation we ought to be having. We're doing this again, _my way."_

"I have you outgunned and outmanned, Itsuka!" Xanthe roared. "Surrender!"

Orga paused for a moment, his eyes seemed to roam over the sky. The grin that came split his face apart.

"Itsuk— "

Orga roared in laughter, clenching at his stomach.

He kept laughing, wheezing, as nearly two hundred soldiers nervously aimed at their opposite numbers, their fingers on their triggers, staring at the black gunmetal around them—and at him. He could see it in the House Soldier's eyes, they were asking, demanding; _has he gone insane—_

 _"Ahh-ha ...haha, haah..." these fucking aristocrats._

Tekkadan's soldiers held their positions, gulping down their nervousness; their faith in Orga invincible.

 _Thanks, guys._

"Are you mad, boy?" Duke Xanthe whispered. "I have your men outnumbered. I'll bring you down and discipline you like the mad peasant you are and you will _thank me_ for my mercy."

"You and what other army, motherfucker?" Orga smiled, his eyes pinpricks. The cold chips from the depths of a glacier. "Look around you, you arrogant fuck." Orga grinned fiercely, proudly, at the overlooking hill. "Look up! _Look up!_ "

 _Gutter trash telling aristocrats to see what's higher than them. I doubt that's too common._

Duke Xanthe's eyes widened, a strangled choke of a sound coming from his throat—for a half-instant.

 _Thanks, Akihiro._

Staring down from the top of the hill was the _other_ one-hundred soldiers Orga brought to Chryse. And eight mobile workers, their black long barrels pointing straight down the hillside, their light autocannons primed and ready, Akihiro staring down from the hatch of his dark blue mobile worker.

"I agree, Duke Xanthe." Orga shook his head, grinning. "I agree. It's time for you to surrender."

He turned to Xanthe's men. _"DROP YOUR WEAPONS."_

They obeyed instantly, without waiting for word from their aristocratic commander. Orga scoffed internally at the sight. _So fucking worthless. These are the elites?_

He turned to the speechless, bone-pale Duke and ducal heir. He grinned. "Now that we're doing introductions again, listen up. Because neither of you have a _fucking clue_ what you're doing or what you're talking about. Bringing in the frontier companies? Thinking that the one thing that makes Tekkadan different from them is the _Alaya-Vijnana?"_ Orga scoffed for a moment, shaking his head. _"You idiots._ Have either of you even seen a battle out on the borders? Ever?"

He didn't wait for an answer.

"Listen up." Orga forced his expression to calm into a cold neutrality. "I'll do this one more time. The name is Orga Itsuka, the boss of Tekkadan, _until and if_ my best friend Mikazuki Augus thinks he's up for the job. I'd be happy to let him try, but that's neither here, nor there. Right now, I'm in charge." His eyes narrowed. "And you... you two seem to have confused something." He breathed, and continued.

"Those other PMCs you mentioned; The Red Line Company, The Five Hundred Guns, The Black Hogs, all the rest of those worthless fucks... they're to us what eunuchs are to real men. They're good for nothing but raping and killing; not fighting. _Organizing them? Recalling them to the cities?_ The two of you are idiots _might_ end up getting yourselves killed. That, I wouldn't care about too much, but it's more likely that you'll get a lot of _other_ good people killed from that bad call. If you've met with any of their reps, you were being lied to. You fell for a mask. Guess what, out in the Lawless Territories? _They take those masks off._ " Orga shook his head slowly, and sighed. Checking that his audience—the aristocrats, the House Soldiers, his own ragtag army—were following along.

"Let me tell you a story, Duke Xanthe."

 _Let me tell you a story._

* * *

I'm splitting this chapter into two pieces. This section has been done for a few days. The next half of Orga's interlude is very difficult to write, and gets into some of Orga and Mikazuki's pre-canon history together. It should be done in a few days. It is not pleasant reading. Colonies in real life were founded on human brutality, for the most part. Post-Disaster-Era Mars would be no exception.

About Orga—

Orga got along well with Naze Turbine, because when you get down to it, they were very similar men, different only in age and resources. They operated on practically identical emotional wavelengths: Naze just happened to already have that which Orga was striving for, though perhaps Naze was smart enough to be satisfied with _less_ than what Orga died trying to achieve.

Orga's an interesting character to write. Full of internal contradiction, wavering between noble and mercenary mindsets, and unwilling to take shit from those he doesn't respect. Easily triggered by disrespect for his troops/friends/loyal followers. A mercenary, but as noble as a mercenary can be, within the constraints of caring for his men first above all others.

About Martian politics—

There are different factions in the Martian political sphere. The Bureaucratic Colonial Administrations want democracy and a continuation of the separate colonial borders. They, particularly Arbrau, want Gjallarhorn-Earth gone. The Colonial Governments largely represent the people (the wealthy people) and the merchant classes. The Colonial Administrations are seen as weak and corrupt—and this is largely true. Bribery is their bread and butter, like many Colonial Administrations in real-life Earth history.

The Martian Gjallarhorn nobility, on the other hand, own most of the land, and the majority of the wealth; they have little care for separate borders—they live on a supra-national level—and mostly seek to maintain their own privileges at minimal cost.

In the past, the Martian Gjallarhorn nobility was far more engaged with governing than they are right now—they are no longer seen as equal partners by their fellow nobles in the Earth/Moon Spheres. The Seven Stars have been pulling too many resources back to Earth, and anti-colonial racist sentiments have alienated the Martian nobles - rank be damned. The Martian nobles of Gjallarhorn aren't especially politically respected and now want to act under their own direction.

A few of those nobles, like this OC Duke Xanthe, are especially ambitious and want to create a political bloc capable of pushing against Gjallarhorn/Teiwaz.

The lower classes have no political representation, save by violence. Hence why so many live beyond the colonial borders (I.E., Lawless Territory).


End file.
